The Diffusion of Democracy, 1946–1994

Ο’Loughlin, John; Ward, Michael D.; Lofdahl, Corey; Cohen, Jordin S.; Brown, David S.; Reilly, David; Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede; Shin, Michael

doi:10.1111/0004-5608.00112

Cited by 234 publications

(130 citation statements)

References 99 publications

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“…Similar points have been made by scholars in other contexts (O'Loughlin et al, 1998;Bridge, 2002). Yet, to the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to explore the conditioning role of domestic attributes on extra-territorial influences in the diffusion of organizational standards.…”

Section: Conventional Approaches To Diffusion and Their Shortcomingssupporting

confidence: 87%

Geographic Variations in the Early Diffusion of Corporate Voluntary Standards: Comparing ISO 14001 and the Global Compact

2010

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Despite their availability to firms across the world, uptake of global voluntary standards has proceeded unevenly across countries over time. In this article, we seek to provide new insights into how geography shapes these spatio-temporal variations, focusing on two leading examples of codified voluntarism: ISO14001 and the Global Compact (GC).Advancing on previous quantitative studies, which have analyzed domestic and nondomestic influences separately, we examine how the internal attributes of place "condition" the influence of transnational spatial interdependencies. We find that higher levels of ISO14001 certification in other economies are more likely to spillover (via transnational linkages) into higher domestic uptake of the standard in wealthier economies, while domestic receptivity to the influence of higher GC adoptions abroad is greater in more democratic countries. Another important advance on previous studies is that we examine the influence of a larger number of measures of transnational economic linkage. Providing evidence of "trading-up" and "investing-up" dynamics, we show that higher densities of ISO14001 certificates and GC participants in a country's export and inward FDI partners is associated with higher levels of domestic uptake of the respective standard. We also find tentative evidence of "visiting-up" dynamics associated with the cross-border movement of businesspeople.2

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Section: Conventional Approaches To Diffusion and Their Shortcomingssupporting

confidence: 87%

Geographic Variations in the Early Diffusion of Corporate Voluntary Standards: Comparing ISO 14001 and the Global Compact

2010

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“…It is not surprising that democratization on a world scale for these reasons has been found to follow time and space diffusion patterns [18,19,29,36,[43][44][45][46][47][48][49]. As a consequence, one would also expect later adopters to undergo shorter transitions than earlier -though previous studies of that have not been found.…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the 860 cases that institutional transitions have occurred, there was a majority with a direction towards increased democracy (511 cases) rather than in the opposite direction (349 cases; binomial test: p b 0.001). Over time, such institutional changes in favor of democracy have resulted in an increasing number of democracies across the globe [19,29,43,44,47,49,60]. Previous analyses of direction and length in institutional leaps also show that transitions tend to cluster in only two major regime-types: autocracy and democracy [14].…”

Section: Transitions/adoption Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Democratic revolutions as institutional innovation diffusion: Rapid adoption and survival of democracy

Jansson

Lindenfors

Sandberg

2013

Technological Forecasting and Social Change

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Recent 'democratic revolutions' in Islamic countries call for a re-consideration of transitions to and from democracy. Transitions to democracy have often been considered the outcome of socio-economic modernization and therefore slow and incremental processes. But as a recent study has made clear, in the last century, transitions to democracy have mainly occurred through rapid leaps rather than slow and incremental steps. Here, we therefore apply an innovation and systems perspective and consider transitions to democracy as processes of institutional, and therefore systemic, innovation adoption. We show that transitions to democracy starting before 1900 lasted for an average of 50 years and a median of 56 years, while transitions originating later took an average of 4.6 years and a median of 1.7 years. However, our results indicate that the survival time of democratic regimes is longer in cases where the transition periods have also been longer, suggesting that patience paid in previous democratizations. We identify a critical 'consolidation-preparing' transition period of 12 years. Our results also show that in cases where the transitions have not been made directly from autocracy to democracy, there are no main institutional paths towards democracy. Instead, democracy seems reachable from a variety of directions. This is in line with the analogy of diffusion of innovations at the nation systems level, for which assumptions are that potential adopter systems may vary in susceptibility over time. The adoption of the institutions of democracy therefore corresponds to the adoption of a new political communications standard for a nation, in this case the innovation of involving in principle all adult citizens on an equal basis.

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“…Relative location, in the form of a regional neighbourhood effect, is a second exogenous determinant of political evolution according to the political science literature. For instance, O'Loughlin et al (1998) document global regional fluxes between democratic and autocratic regimes since 1946, which point to a strong regional demonstration effect. They link this to shared contextual constraints: 'At the meso-level [global regional level], certain types of regionally clustered states are more susceptible to democratization than other regions due to "snowballing" or contagion effects from neighbours.…”

Section: Stm and Sanctions Against Anti-social Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Patterns of Rent Extraction and Deployment in Developing Countries: Implications for Governance, Economic Policy and Performance

Auty¹

2007

Advancing Development

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Rents tend to be relatively high in developing countries and also very fungible, so that differences in the scale of the rent and in its distribution among economic agents profoundly affect the nature of the political state and the development trajectory. This paper identifies two basic trajectories to a high-income democracy linked to the scale and deployment of rents. Low-rent countries tend to engender developmental political states that competitively diversify the economy and sustain rapid per capita GDP (PCGDP) growth, which strengthens three key sanctions against anti-social governance (political accountability, social capital and the rule of law) to achieve endogenous democratization that is incremental. In contrast, rent-rich countries are likely to experience a slower and more erratic transition. This is because high rents tend to …/

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The Diffusion of Democracy, 1946–1994

Cited by 234 publications

References 99 publications

Geographic Variations in the Early Diffusion of Corporate Voluntary Standards: Comparing ISO 14001 and the Global Compact

Geographic Variations in the Early Diffusion of Corporate Voluntary Standards: Comparing ISO 14001 and the Global Compact

Democratic revolutions as institutional innovation diffusion: Rapid adoption and survival of democracy

Patterns of Rent Extraction and Deployment in Developing Countries: Implications for Governance, Economic Policy and Performance

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