Title:      Authoritarian Reversals and Democratic Consolidation

Authors:    Milan  Svolik

Entrydate:  2007-02-21 09:21:01

Keywords:   democratic consolidation, transitions to democracy,
split-population models, cure rate models, mixture models

Abstract:   I investigate the determinants and the process of
authoritarian reversals and democratic consolidation. I employ a new
empirical model that allows me to distinguish between two central
dynamics: the likelihood that a democracy consolidates, and the
timing of authoritarian reversals in democracies that are not
consolidated. I demonstrate that existing democracies are a mixture
of transitional and consolidated democracies rather than a single
population. This approach leads to new insights into the causes of
democratic consolidation that cannot be obtained with existing
techniques. I find that the level of economic development, type of
executive, and authoritarian past determine whether a democracy
consolidates, but have no effect on the timing of reversals. That
risk is only associated with economic recessions. I also find that
the existing studies greatly underestimate the risk of early
reversals while they simultaneously overestimate the risk of late
reversals, and that a large number of existing democracies are in
fact consolidated.

http://polmeth.wustl.edu/retrieve.php?id=689