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Provides an innovative theory of regime transitions and outcomes, and tests it using extensive evidence between 1800 and today.
List of contents
1. Elites and the causes and consequences of democracy; 2. Constitutions as elite deal-making: content and trends; 3. Evidence on the causes and consequences of democracy; 4. Unravelling the deal: constitutional annulments and amendments under elite biased democracy; 5. Sweden: from Agrarian oligarchy to progressive democracy; 6. Chile: from authoritarian legacies to a new dawn? 7. Colonial and occupier legacies in new democracies.
About the author
Michael Albertus is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. His research interests include redistribution, political regime transitions and regime stability, politics under dictatorship, clientelism, and conflict. Albertus's first book, Autocracy and Redistribution: The Politics of Land Reform (Cambridge, 2015), won the Gregory Luebbert Award for best book in comparative politics and the LASA Bryce Wood Award for best book on Latin America in the social sciences and humanities. He has also recently published in journals such as American Journal of Political Science, World Politics, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, British Journal of Political Science, and Comparative Political Studies.Victor Menaldo is an Associate Professor of Political Science at University of Washington and an affiliated faculty member of the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, Near and Middle Eastern Studies, and the Center for Environmental Politics. He specializes in comparative politics and political economy. He has published in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Annual Review of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, World Politics, Comparative Politics, International Studies Quarterly, Economics & Politics, Political Science Quarterly, and Policy Sciences. His first book is entitled The Institutions Curse: Natural Resources, Politics, and Development (Cambridge, 2016).
Summary
This book explores the origins of democracy and the impact that autocratic legacies have after democratization. It examines why those who benefited under the previous dictatorship continue to do so after they step down from power. It therefore addresses longstanding questions that have appeal to academic, policy, and lay audiences.
