[gov2001-l] Lam/Larson Abstract

Testing the Waves: Looking for International Effects on Democratization Gleditsch and Ward (2006) argue that democratization is influenced by international factors such as the degree to which neighbors and the international environment are democratized. Using multiple imputation methods to correct for missing data problems, we confirm the authors' results that high proportions of neighboring democracies increase both democratic transitions and democratic consolidation, although the effect on democratic transitions is much smaller after 1950. However, while the authors find no effect of higher global proportions of democracies on democracy consolidation, we find that when considering a more complete set of countries, higher proportions of global democracy actually predict less democratic consolidation. We hypothesize that this more complete set of countries is better reflecting the wave pattern of democratization. When waves of democratization occur, the proportion of democracies increases, many of which are unsustainable. The instability caused by rapid and widespread democratization may increase the probability of reverting back to autocracy for many countries.