Regimes controlled by a rich elite often collapse and make way for democracy amidst widespread social unrest. Such … why the elite may have to resort to full-scale democratization, despite its apparent costs to themselves, may be that … therefore be forced to choose between repression and the most generous concession, a transition to full democracy. …

Do foreign educated individuals play a role in promoting democracy in their home country? Despite the large amount of … foster democracy in their home countries. Using a unique panel dataset on foreign students starting from 1950, I show that … indeed foreign-educated individuals promote democracy in their home country, but only if the foreign education is acquired in …

The conventional wisdom in political science is that for a democracy to be consoliated, all groups must have a chance … to attain power. If they do not then they will subvert democracy and choose to fight for power. In this paper we show … model, we show that democracy may never be consolidated in such a situation. Rather, democracy may only be stable when one …

unrest or revolution, and this may force the elite to democratize. Democracy may not consolidate because it is more … redistributive than a nondemocratic regime, and this gives the elite an incentive to mount a coup. Because inequality makes democracy … more costly for the elite, highly unequal societies are less likely to consolidate democracy and may end up oscillating …

In this paper, we present a citizen-candidate model of representative democracy with endogenous lobbying. We find that …