When do countries democratize? What facilitates the survival of authoritarian regimes? What determines the occurrence of revolutions, often leading to left-wing dictatorships, such as the Soviet regime? Although a large literature has developed since Aristotle through contemporary political science to answer these questions, we still lack a convincing understanding of the process of political development. Employing analytical tools borrowed from game theory, Carles Boix offers a complete theory of political transitions, in which political regimes ultimately hinge on the nature of economic assets, their distribution among individuals, and the balance of power among different social groups. Backed up by detailed historical work and extensive statistical analysis that goes back to the mid-nineteenth century, this 2003 book explains why democracy emerged in classical Athens. It also discusses the early triumph of democracy in both nineteenth-century agrarian Norway, Switzerland and northeastern America and the failure in countries with a powerful landowning class.

Purpose This paper examines the effects of globalisation on the pace of governments implementing international travel restrictions during the recent coronavirus pandemic. Results We nd that more globalised countries experienced a longer delay in implementing international travel restriction policies with respect to the date of the rst con rmed COVID-19 case. We also nd that informational (a subcomponent of social globalisation) and political globalisation have the strongest effects on the observed delays in implementing international travel restriction policies in more globalised countries. Lastly, we do not nd evidence that more globalised countries are more likely to adopt a more restrictive international travel policy as the rst response to the pandemic. Conclusions The ndings highlight the dynamic relationship between globalisation and protectionism when governments respond to signi cant global events such as a public health crisis. Background The level of complexity around containing emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases has increased with the ease and increased incidence of global travel [1], along with greater global social, economic, and political integration [2]. In reference to in uenza pandemics, but nonetheless applicable to many communicable and vector-borne diseases, the only certainty is in the growing unpredictability of pandemic-potential infectious disease emergence, origins, characteristics, and the biological pathways through which they propagate [3]. Globalisation of trade and increased international travel have been seen as some of the main human in uences on the emergence, re-emergence, and transmission of infectious diseases in the 21st Century [4]. Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases have been a major challenge for human health in ancient and modern societies alike [5-9]. The relative rise in infectious disease mortality and shifting patterns of disease emergence, re-emergence, and transmission in the current era have been attributed to increased global connectedness, among other factors [10]. More globalized countries and in particular global cities are at the heart of human in uence on infectious diseases; these modern, densely populated urban centres, highly interconnected with the world economy in terms of social mobility, trade, and international travel [11, 12]. One might assume that given their high susceptibility to the transmission of infectious diseases, globalised countries would be more willing than less globalised countries to adopt screening, quarantine, travel restriction, and border control measures during times of mass disease outbreaks. However, given their nature, globalised countries would also be assumed to favour less protectionist policies in general; thus, contradicting the aforementioned assumption. Moreover, the costs of closing are comparatively higher for open countries than for already protective ones. Globalisation, after all, is known to promote growth and does so via a combination of three main globalisation dimensions: economic integration ...

The authors show that economic development increases the probability that a country will undergo a transition to democracy. These results contradict the finding of Przeworski and his associates, that development causes democracy to last but not to come into existence in the first place. By dealing adequately with problems of sample selection and model specification, the authors discover that economic growth does cause nondemocracies to democratize. They show that the effect of economic development on the probability of a transition to democracy in the hundred years between the mid-nineteenth century and World War II was substantial, indeed, even stronger than its effect on democratic stability. They also show that, in more recent decades, some countries that developed but remained dictatorships would, because of their development, be expected to democratize in as few as three years after achieving a per capita income of $12,000 per capita.

Looking at the history of democracies in the developed world, I show that electoral systems derive from the decisions the ruling parties make to maximize their representation according to the following conditions. As long as the electoral arena does not change and the current electoral regime benefits the ruling parties, the electoral system is not altered. As the electoral arena changes (due to the entry of new voters or a change in voters' preferences), the ruling parties modify the electoral system, depending on the emergence of new parties and the coordinating capacities of the old parties. When the new parties are strong, the old parties shift from plurality/majority to proportional representation if no old party enjoys a dominant position, but they do not do this if there is a dominant old party. When new entrants are weak, a system of nonproportional representation is maintained, regardless of the structure of the old party system.

Why do some dictatorships establish institutions that may constrain their leaders? We argue that institutions promote the survival of dictatorships by facilitating authoritarian power-sharing. Specifically, institutions such as parties, legislatures, and advisory councils alleviate commitment and monitoring problems between the dictator and his allies caused by the secrecy in authoritarian governance. However, because authoritarian power-sharing succeeds only when it is backed by a credible threat of a rebellion by the dictator's allies, institutions will be ineffective or break down when an imbalance of power within the ruling coalition undermines this threat's credibility. Our arguments clarify the complex interaction between collective action, commitment, and monitoring problems in authoritarian governance. We use both historical and large-N data to assess new empirical predictions about the relationship between political institutions, leader survival, and the concentration of power in dictatorships.