Title: Which Democracies Will Last? Coups, Incumbent Takeovers, and the Dynamic of Democratic Consolidation
Abstract: This paper develops a new, change-point model of democratic consolidation that conceives of consolidation as a latent quality to be inferred rather than measured directly. Instead of assuming that consolidation occurs, the present model estimates both whether and when consolidation occurs. Consolidation is hypothesized to occur when a decline in the risk of a democratic breakdown is i) significant and ii) durable. This approach is applied to new data on democratic survival that distinguish between two processes by which an overwhelming majority of authoritarian breakdowns occur: coups d'etat and incumbent takeovers. I find that the risk of authoritarian reversals by each of the two processes differs both in its dynamic and determinants. Crucially, new democracies appear to consolidate against the risk of coups but not the risk of incumbent takeovers. These empirical findings suggest that separate theoretical mechanisms account for the vulnerability of new democracies to these alternative modes of breakdown.
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-12-28
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 2
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