Original citation:Lankina, Tomila V. and Getachew, Lullit (2006) A geographic incremental theory of democratization: territory, aid, and democracy in postcommunist regions. World politics, 58 (4 This document is the author's final manuscript accepted version of the journal article, incorporating any revisions agreed during the peer review process. Some differences between this version and the published version may remain. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. AbstractThe article examines the impact of geographical proximity to the West and Western aid on democracy in Russia's regions and advances a geographic-incrementalist theory of democratization. Even when national politicians exhibit authoritarian tendencies, diffusion processes and targeted foreign aid help advance democratization at the subnational level in post-communist states and other settings. We make this case by conducting process-tracing case studies of democratic institution-building in two Northwestern border regions, as well as statistical analysis of over one thousand projects that the European Union carried out in Russia's localities over fourteen years. We find that the EU shows commitment to democratic reform particularly in, but not limited to, regions located on its Eastern frontier. This over time positively affects the democratic trajectory of the respective regions even if they had been more closed to begin with compared to other regions.

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There is a rich body of theorizing on the diffusion of democracy across space and time. There is also an emerging scholarship on authoritarian diffusion. The dynamics of the interaction between external democratic and autocratic diffusion processes and their effects on national and sub-national political regime outcomes have received scant attention in the literature. Do democratic diffusion processes help counter external authoritarian influences? And, in contexts where external diffusion of democratic influences is weak, do we observe greater susceptibility to diffusion from regional autocracies that might in turn reinforce authoritarian practices and institutions in "recipient" states? To address these questions, we perform analysis of data from two original under-utilized datasets-a dataset on EU aid to Russia's regions; and a dataset with statistics on trade among post-Soviet states. We find that EU aid has the effect of countering external authoritarian influences that work through Soviet-era inter-regional economic ties.

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Why are some former colonies more democratic than others? The British Empire has been singled out in the debates on colonialism for its benign influence on democracy. Much of this scholarship has focused on colonialism's institutional legacies; has neglected to distinguish among the actors associated with colonialism; and has been nation‐state focused. Our subnational approach allows us to isolate the democracy effects of key actors operating in colonial domains—Christian missionaries—from those of colonial powers. Missionaries influenced democracy by promoting education; education promoted social inclusivity and spurred social reform movements. To make our case, we constructed colonial and postcolonial period district datasets of India and conducted panel analysis of literacy and democracy variations backed by case studies. The findings challenge the conventional wisdom of the centrality of the effects of British institutions on democracy, instead also highlighting the missionaries’ human capital legacies.