2008/05/01 by Milan W. Svolik · 4 citations
Social Sciences · #Political Conflict and Governance #Culture, Economy, and Development Studies #Corruption and Economic Development
paper · doi:10.1017/s0003055408080143
openalex publication_date 2008/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
I present a new empirical approach to the study of democratic consolidation. This approach leads to new insights into the determinants of democratic consolidation that cannot be obtained with existing techniques. I distinguish between democracies that survive because they are consolidated and those democracies that are not consolidated but survive because of some favorable circumstances. As a result, I can identify the determinants of two related yet distinct processes: the likelihood that a democracy consolidates, and the timing of authoritarian reversals in democracies that are not consolidated. I find that the level of economic development, type of democratic executive, and type of authoritarian past determine whether a democracy consolidates, but have no effect on the timing of reversals in democracies that are not consolidated. That risk is only associated with economic recessions. I also find that existing studies greatly underestimate the risk of early reversals while simultaneously overestimating the risk of late reversals, and that a large number of existing democracies are in fact consolidated.