This paper investigates the endogenous emergence of democracy and rule of law in an economy where heterogeneous … conditional on beliefs about property rights enforcement. Democratization is endogenous, but the features of democracies are shown … to be crucially related to the conditions under which democratization initially takes place. Democratic transitions …

We construct a model of revolution and transition to democracy under an individualistic and a collectivist culture. The … culture are more likely to end up adopting democracy faster than countries with a collectivist culture. Our instrumental … democracy, even after controlling for other determinants of democracy emphasized in the literature. We also give evidence that …

This paper investigates the role of violent civil conflicts during the process of democratization for the quality of … different groups may engage in violent conflict in order to become the ruler predicts a crucial role of the democratization … scenario. A peaceful democratization leads to democracies with a high degree of civil liberties, reflecting a social contract …

We identify permanent democratic transitions during the Third Wave of Democratization and the nineties, when many … relatively stable democracy to autocracy and 6 episodes of small improvements in representative institutions. We also classify … prerequisites for democracy in these countries that enter the Third Wave as non-democracies. Examining initially autocratic …

Theory and empirics are ambiguous on the effect of democracy on growth. Cross-country studies find that democracy has … democracy. We reconcile this inconsistency by showing that the positive effect of political transition is a result of swift … regime change and not democratization. We identify and examine 90 successful, failed, and gradual transitions that have …

democracy during the following two years by around 3 percentage points. A 5% fall in income due to low rainfall raises the … probability of democratization by around 7 percentage points. We also find that rainfall does not affect transitions from … democracy to autocracy. …

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 …

evaluate separately the impact of political institutions linked to democracy and suffrage and of those institutions more … through a set of instruments exploiting colonial history and the quality of institutions inherited from the past. …