Over the last two centuries, many countries experienced regime transitions toward democracy. We document this … democratic transition over a long time horizon. We use historical time series of income, education and democracy levels from 1870 … to 2000 to explore the economic factors associated with rising levels of democracy. We find that primary schooling, and …

there exists a distribution of resources such that democracy emerges in equilibrium, but there are distributions of … resources for which democracy is infeasible in equilibrium irrespective of the level of development. The model also delivers … results on the stability of democracy with regard to changes in the economic and demographic environment. The results are …

between democracy and institutional quality. …