1

Introduction
Christian W. Haerpfer, Patrick Bernhagen,
Ronald F. Inglehart, and Christian Welzel

N 1989 the number of democracies exceeded the

number of autocracies for the first time in history,
apart from a brief period after World War I. Since the
early 1970s, the number of democracies has risen
steadily. Indeed, data from the Polity IV project indicate that the number of full democracies in the
world increased from 44 in 1985 to 93 in 2005 (see
Figure 1.1). The number of democracies more than
doubled in two decades, while the number of autocracies was cut in half. This dramatic development
constituted a global wave of democracy.
For the first time in human history, a majority of
the world population lives under freely chosen governments. Samuel Huntington (1991) calls it the
third wave of democratization and characterizes it
as one of the most important developments in the
history of humankind. This statement is not exaggerated. Democracy improves peoples lives in many
ways. Compared with non-democracies, democratic
countries are better at protecting and respecting their
citizens human rights (Poe and Tate 1994). Democracy seems to reduce the risk of civil war and (Gurr
2000) and even of terrorism (Li 2005). There is also
evidence that democratic countries behave more
peacefully internationally (Russett 1993). Democratic states also tend to be richer and economically
more developed than non-democracies, although it
is not clear whether wealth promotes democracy or
democracy promotes wealth, or both. Democracy
has been credited with providing a better environment for economic development and for distributing societys wealth more equitably (Reuveny and Li
2003) and reducing the most extreme levels of poverty (Sen 1999). The evidence supporting the last two
claims is ambiguous, however. While Bruce Bueno de
Mesquita et al. (2003) find that democracy reduces

01-haerpfer-chap01.indd 1

infant mortality, a statistical analysis by Michael

Ross (2006) produces more dubious results. Quan Li
and Rafael Reuveny (2006) find that democracies are
also better at protecting the natural environment,
although there are reasons to fear that democratic
institutions encourage ecologically irresponsible
political behaviour (Gleditsch and Sverdrup 2003).
Finally, there is evidence that democracy increases
peoples happiness and life satisfaction (Inglehart et
al. 2008). Despite some skepticism, an array of positive outcomes is attributed to democracy.
Many of the positive aspects of democracy are weaker
in the new democracies than in long-established ones
(Rose 2001). As Figure 1.2 illustrates, human rights,
prosperity, peace, and welfare spending are strongly
correlated with a societys level of democracy. For
example, the countries scoring highest on democracy
have a mean income level about four times as high as
the countries scoring at the lowest level. The columns
in this figure reflect the strength of the correlations.
When we control for how long a society has lived under
democratic institutions, democracys correlation with
prosperity, peace, and human rights diminishes considerably, suggesting that long experience with democracy contributes to its positive correlates (Gerring et al.
2005). But the correlations do not vanish. They remain
strongly positive and statistically highly significant:
even new democracies rank substantially higher than
non-democracies on human rights, prosperity, peace,
and welfare spending. The rise of democracy seems to
improve peoples lives in many important ways.
Although democracies tend to perform better than
dictatorships on these dimensions, these are statistical
tendencies rather than iron laws. One can find cases
in which autocracies perform well in meeting the
expectations of citizens and consequently enjoying

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C. W. HAERPFER, P. BERNHAGEN, R. F. INGLEHART, AND C. WELZEL

170
160
150
140
130
120
110

Democratic
Breakthrough

Frequency

100
90
80
70
States

60
50
40
Autoc

cie

racies

cra

30

De

mo

20
10

1800
1805
1810
1815
1820
1825
1830
1835
1840
1845
1850
1855
1860
1865
1870
1875
1880
1885
1890
1895
1900
1905
1910
1915
1920
1925
1930
1935
1940
1945
1950
1955
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005

Year

Fig 1.1 The global wave of democracy

Notes: Democracies are full democracies, defined as countries in the upper quartile of the Polity IV democracy-autocracy scale; full autocracies
are those countries in the lower quartile. Intermediate or incomplete regime types are not included in the graph.

high levels of legitimacy. For example, Singapore is

highly prosperous and well-governed although it has
authoritarian government. And China currently has
one of the highest economic growth rates in the world.
Democracies tend to perform better than authoritarian states, but there is no guarantee that they will. But
quite apart from the benefits people around the world
have come to associate with democracy, there are ethical grounds for believing that human beings should
decide their common political affairs in a democratic
fashion. Democratic government maximizes the
extent to which people attain individual autonomy
and political equality, which are highly valued in most
societies around the world. Autonomy allows people
to choose how to live their own lives. It is consistent
with the assumption that adults are normally the best

01-haerpfer-chap01.indd 2

judge of their interests and goals (Dahl 1989: 12930).

Without personal autonomy one cannot follow ones
own willa crucial requirement for moral behaviour. According to Immanuel Kant (1996), reasona
uniquely human capacityenables people to have a
free will. This free will can only be effective if it operates so that ones self-imposed imperatives could be
accepted as universally binding laws. For Kant, being
the subject of ones own lawsbeing autonomousis
the basis of human dignity and the supreme principle
of morality.
Because autonomy is of such fundamental value it
must equally apply to all persons in the highest possible way; any deviation or qualification would mean
a reduction of human dignity. Thus the argument for
autonomy is also an argument for equality. Robert

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1 INTRODUCTION

Correlation with Democracy (Pearson's r)

1.0
0.9

Before Controlling Age

of Democracy

0.8

After Controlling Age

of Democracy

0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0
Human Rights

Prosperity

Peace and
Stability

Welfare Spending

Fig 1.2 The linkage between democracy and humane, prosperous, and peaceful societies
Notes: Democracy is the combined and inverted Freedom House index, averaged over the period 200005. The human rights measure is the
index of physical integrity rights between 2000 and 2004 by Richards and Cingranelli (available at <http://ciri.binghamton.edu>). Prosperity
is measured as per capita GDP in purchasing power parities in 2003, with data taken from the World Bank. Peace and stability is the World
Banks good governance scores for political stability and absence of violence in 2005. Welfare spending is measured with World Bank data on
the percentage of government spending in health and education minus spending in military. The age of democracy is Gerring et al.s (2005)
democracy stock index as of 1995.

Dahl holds that the principle of intrinsic equality is

an integral part of the fundamental beliefs and values of Western society (Dahl 1989). Later in this volume, we will examine how this appeal to a common
cultural heritage raises problems for democracys
universal appeal. Nevertheless, emphasis on equality
has widespread appeal in many non-Western societies, and there is evidence that the desire for freedom and autonomy are universal human aspirations
(Welzel et al. 2003).
For all these reasons, the recent dramatic expansion of democracy has been widely viewed as opening
the way to a more prosperous, peaceful, and humane
world. Political scientists have enthusiastically welcomed the democratic trend of recent decades and

01-haerpfer-chap01.indd 3

Francis Fukuyama (1992) described the triumph of

democracy as the end of history, arguing that with
the collapse of communism, there is no longer an alternative model that can credibly challenge the claim of
liberal democracy to be the best form of society.
Nevertheless, there are good reasons for taking
a critical view of the democratic trend. The first is
that many of the new democracies show serious
defects, especially in the extent to which they protect human rights, respect the rule of law, and in
their accountability and transparency. Effective
democracies, that is, democracies in which the rule
of law effectively protects popular rights, still constitute a clear minority of the worlds societies, accounting for about half of all democracies and a quarter

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C. W. HAERPFER, P. BERNHAGEN, R. F. INGLEHART, AND C. WELZEL

of all states. Second, even though mass support for

democracy has become almost universal, many citizens support for democracy is shallow and lacks
genuinely democratic motivations (Inglehart 2003).
Particularly in new democracies, when people pay lip
service to democracy, it is often supported because it
is thought to be linked with prosperity rather than as
a good in itself, and the meaning of democracy may
be seriously misunderstood. Consequentlysurprising as it may seemthere is only a weak relationship
between the extent to which the public of a given
society endorses democracy, and its actual level of
democracy.
Nevertheless, the global diffusion of support for
democracy and the expansion of democracies is an
important turning point in history. Today, through-

out most of the world, democracy has become the

sole credible basis of political legitimacy. More than
ever, governments around the world are evaluated
and measured against democratic standards by
international organizations, by international media
outlets, by non-profit organizations and by international non-governmental organizations such as
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Journalists Without Borders, Transparency International,
among many others. The growth of a transnational
civil society that focuses on assessing and promoting
democracy is a reflection of the global democratic
trend. A major success of democracy is the fact that
it has become the most widely accepted model of a
legitimate human order.

Approaches to the Study of Democratization

The global democratic trend of recent decades has
become subject of an ever growing literature. An
enormous range of explanations and interpretations
have been advanced for the global spread of democracy. Despite this variety, there are two relatively
simple distinctions, defining four major approaches. The first distinction is between focusing on how
democracy emerges, and focusing on why it emerges.
The first approach focuses on what happens during
a democratization process, emphasizing the role of
elite pacts, mass social movements or international
interventions. It focuses on proximate causes rather
than long-term causes. In a strict sense, this situation-oriented approach does not explain democratization. It describes it, even if the description is highly
formalized, as in game-theoretical models of transition processes. Its strength is illuminating the role of
human agency, that is, how given decision-makers
carry out democratization.
Another approach focuses on conditions that predate democratization processes. The aim is to identify
the factors that make it likely for democratization to
start and to succeed, rather than focusing on what
takes place during the process of democratization
itself. Using this approach, scholars have emphasized the role of economic development, social cleavages, class coalitions, international alliances or the

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structure of the world economic system. The emphasis

here is on the why rather than the how of democratic
transitions. The strength of this condition-focused
approach is in highlighting the root causes and the
circumstances within which democratic transitions
typically emerge.
The strengths and weaknesses of the situationfocused and the condition-focused approaches are
compatible, indeed they are perfectly complementary, and so there is no reason to view them as competing alternatives. Insights from both approaches
must be integrated to attain a full understanding of
democratization processes.
The second major distinction is between approaches focusing on domestic factors and those focusing on international factors. The early literature on
transitions to democracy tended to treat each transition as an isolated national event. But when scores
of democratization processes in clusters in international waves, as occurred in the broad wave of
democracy that took place since 1970, the assumption that democratic transitions are primarily driven
by domestic circumstances can only be part of the
story. It is clear that international and transnational
forces and actors are involved when democratization processes occur as international trends. Hence,
a more recent approach has emphasized the role

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1 INTRODUCTION

of changing international alliances; the liberalization of the global economic system; the diffusion of
democratic ideas through globalization of information, global trade and tourism; international democracy promotion through national governments, and
international organizations including international
non-governmental organizations (INGOs); and decisive events that changed the international context in
a pro-democratic way, such as the nullification of the
Brezhnev Doctrine.
Like domestic factors, international factors cannot
on their own account for democratization. When one
examines what happened in Latin America, East Asia,
Eastern Europe, or Sub-Saharan Africa, it is clear that
many countries in the same region were exposed to
similar international influences, but these countries
differed greatly concerning whether, when, and how
deeply they democratized. International factors may
create an external opportunity structure that makes
it relatively difficult or relatively easy for democratization to occur, exposing all countries in a given
region to a new situation. But how these opportunities are used depends on domestic factors. Again, the
two types of approaches are not mutually exclusive,
but complementary.
The scholarly debate has often been marked by
sweeping statements that have at times been accepted uncritically and at other times been fiercely disputed. For instance, Przeworski et al.s (2000) claim
that economic development does not contribute

to the emergence of democracy, but helps existing

democracies to survive, was once widely accepted
but has, more recently, been reappraised. Boix and
Stokes (2003) and Inglehart and Welzel (2005) have
criticized this claim, presenting strong evidence that
economic development does help new democracies
to emerge. Similarly, in an influential book, Acemoglu
and Robinson (2006) argued that the main driver of
democratization is the masses interest in economic
redistribution. But the most massive wave of democratization in recent historythat of the former communist blocdoes not seem to have been motivated
by desires for more economic equality but rather by
a desire to get rid of a system that provided relatively
equal distribution at the cost of human liberty. This
makes it seem likely that this widely-accepted thesis
will also be reappraised. Indeed, it can be argued that
the main motivating force behind democratization
was inspired by a desire for freedom, rather than economic redistribution (Hofferbert and Klingemann
1999).
It is misleading to take any one explanatory factor as an absolute guide. This book examines a
number of perspectives, approaches, and insights
that have informed research on democratization.
Several different analytical perspectives contribute
to an understanding of this topic. Consequently,
this book aims to provide a structured overview of
the leading perspectives and insights concerning
democratization.

Plan of the Book

Throughout the book, democracy and democratizationthe process of attaining democracyare discussed together. Our motivation for treating these
two aspects together is the belief that the key factors that enhance and diminish democracy are at
work in established democracies, in new democracies
and in regimes that are in the process of democratizing. Beyond this common thread, each approach to
democratization is presented by a leading scholar in
the field. The sequence and ordering of chapters is
based on four aspects of democratization: (1) theoretical and historical perspectives of democratization,
(2) causes and dimensions of democratization, (3)

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actors and institutions in democratization, and (4)

geographical regions of democratization. The chapters are organized within these four sections.
Democracy means different things to different
people, and just what distinguishes democracies
from non-democratic regimes is not as clear as it
might seem. Democracy has been on the rise (with
intermittent declines) since the late eighteenth century. The first step is to make it clear what democracy
is and how we know it when we see it. Moreover,
to understand the recent global wave of democracy,
we need to see it in its historical context. Part One
(Theoretical and Historical Perspectives) discusses

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C. W. HAERPFER, P. BERNHAGEN, R. F. INGLEHART, AND C. WELZEL

the difference between democratic and undemocratic states (Ch. 2) and how to determine whether
a country is democratic or not, and to measure how
democratic it is (Ch. 3). Chapter 4 provides an historical overview of democratization since the late eighteenth century, discussing waves and conjunctures.
Chapter 5 focuses on the global wave of democratization from 1970 to the present. Chapter 6 provides
an overview of the major theoretical explanations of
democratization, from situation-focused approaches
to condition-focused approaches, and assesses the
relative explanatory value of various factors, within
the framework of human empowerment.
Part Two (Causes and Dimensions of Democratization), explores the factors that facilitate and inhibit
democratization and discusses the role of democracy beyond the narrowly political sphere. Starting
with the international context of democratization,
Chapter 7 examines the roles that supra-national,
intergovernmental, and international non-governmental organizations play in democratization, and
discusses the role of democratization in the foreign
policies of major powers such as the USA and the
European Union. Chapter 8 explores how economic
factors affect transitions to democracy and discusses
the problems involved in simultaneous transitions
from communist systems to democratic and capitalist systems, and the role of business elites in democratization.1 Chapter 9 deals with political culture,
religion, and questions of legitimacy, examining the
role of mass beliefs in democratization, particularly
the role played by rising emancipative beliefs. Chapter 10 examines the extent to which women benefit
from democratization, reinforcing the view that
democratization is not only about electoral enfranchisement but also about other aspects of social, economic and political life, with gender equality being
crucially important. Chapter 11 analyses the importance of civil society and social capital for successful
democratization, reviewing the debates stimulated
by Robert Putnam and examining problems of weak
civil society and its impact on democratization.
Democracy does not automatically emerge as soon
as a number of favourable social and economic conditions are in place. It requires people to become
active and demand and negotiate political reforms,
within the arenas in which the struggle for democracy is carried out. Even when major conditions are

01-haerpfer-chap01.indd 6

favourable, democracy can break down if people

make the wrong choices, or political institutions
are inadequate. Part Three (Actors and Institutions)
analyses the role of social movements, protest, and
transnational advocacy networks in transitions
to democracy (Ch. 12), and of elections and voter
behaviour in democratizing and newly democratized
systems (Ch. 13). Chapter 14 focuses on the role of
political parties, while Chapter 15 scrutinizes the
role of electoral systems and party systems, and the
implications of parliamentary and presidential systems. Chapter 16 analyses the relationship between
the mass media, democracy, and democratization.
The last chapter in this section (Ch. 17) analyses
failed and incomplete democratization processes
and identifies key factors that make democratization
go wrong.
The fourth section of the book (Regions of Democratizations) examines how the global democratic
trend toward democracy manifested itself in various
regions of the world. Most chapters follow a structure
that starts with a brief historical overview, and then
examines how the factors identified in Parts Two
and Three influence the democratization processes
encountered in the given region. The focus is on
regions rather than single countries, which facilitates
the discussion of international variables, contagion
effects and other regional dynamics. The regions
are examined according to the sequence in which
the global wave of democracy travelled around the
world. Analysing the democratization processes in
Southern Europe in the 1970s, Chapter 18 examines the role of pre-transitional legitimacy crises of
authoritarian regimes, elite pacts and mass mobilization, and international influences as exerted by the
European Union. Chapter 19 examines democratization in Latin America, emphasizing the democratic
transitions and democratic consolidation in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela. Chapter 20 deals
with democratization in post-communist Europe
and the former Soviet Union, the largest group of
countries affected by the global democratic trend. It
emphasizes the unique scope and pace of transitions
in this area and explains why the process of democratization has been very successful in some countries
but failed entirely in others. Successful democratization is rare in North Africa and the Middle East,
which is the focus of Chapter 21. Political Islam, the

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1 INTRODUCTION

Israel-Palestine conflict, and the prevalence of rentseeking economies based on oil wealth are uniquely important factors of this region. In Chapter 22,
democratization in the poorest region in the world,
Sub-Saharan Africa, is analysed. Though still ridden
by severe economic problems, the region has nevertheless experienced a strong trend toward democracy,
to the surprise of many observers. The chapter pays
special attention to South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda,
and Zimbabwe. Lastly, democratization in South-East
Asia is the focus of Chapter 23. Here, we examine
examples of successful mass-pressured democratization as in the Philippines and South Korea, and the
contrasting example of elite-guided democratization
in Taiwan. The chapter also deals with failed popular

pressures to democratize, as in China; with democratization that was reversed by military rule, as in
Thailand; and with the absence of any attempt to
democratize, as in Vietnam or Singapore.
The concluding chapter (Ch. 24) draws together
the themes of the book, summarizing the lessons
learned for democratizers. On this basis, we attempt
a cautious sketch of the future prospects for the
expansion of democracy and for deeper democratization around the world. To do so, the chapter
examines the global democratic trend of recent decades in a broader evolutionary perspective based
on the process of natural selection of regimes, that
reflects their relative likelihood of survival in given
environments.

NOTES
1. Throughout this book, the terms political order, political system, and political regime

are used interchangeably.

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