This paper attempts to integrate the literatures on authoritarian regime types and democratic forms of government. Based on different modes of executive appointment and dismissal, we propose a parsimonious theory of five regime dimensions that cut across the democracy/autocracy divide: the...

Democratic consolidation depends on common perceptions of institutional legitimacy among citizens aligned with governing and opposition parties. Elections always result in winners and losers, but if they also create subservient insiders and aggrieved outsiders, the future of the democratic...

This chapter first discusses some of the established literature on the effects of natural resource abundance on democratization and then shows how an empirical analysis of the relationship supports the theoretical expectations. We also reveal an under-researched aspect of the “resource curse....

This article summarizes some of the key findings from a forthcoming book, Democratization by Elections: A New Mode of Transition? (Johns Hopkins, 2009, edited by the author), and brings together the following three articles by Valerie Bunce and Sharon Wolchik, Lise Rakner and Nicolas van de...

In what sequence do democratic institutions develop during episodes of liberalization in autocracies? Existing research has theorized about the processes and causes of institutional change that make up regime transitions. However, there has been limited research to evaluate the institutional...

One of the most common adjectives used to describe democracy in sub-Saharan Africa is “neopatrimonial.” Characterized by strong executives, pervasive clientelism and use of state resources for political legitimation (Bratton and van de Walle 1997), neopatrimonial democracy has been...