Why Waves? Global Patterns of Democratization, 1816-2008

Using refined measure of democracy and of political system change this paper finds substantial support for Huntington's thesis of democratic waves. The authors proceed to locate the sources of the democratic waves. Reformulating and expanding on Huntington, they hypothesize that a combination of the 'stickiness' of certain institutional configurations, the influence of neighboring countries, and shocks to the interstate system such as the world wars are the main explanation of waves, in combination with the slow but certain impact of economic development. Using multinomial logit analyses of political transitions, they find considerable support for these hypotheses.

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