representative democracy. The basic association, however, is conditioned on the relative strength of the indigenous groups within a … Europe a positive impulse towards the development of representative democracy. It shows that contemporary regimes are shaped …

How does democracy emerge from authoritarian rule? Influential theories contend that incumbents deliberately choose to …, democratization occurred not because incumbent elites chose it but because, in trying to prevent it, they made mistakes that weakened …

causal impact of openness on democratization. A positive impact of openness on democracy is apparent from about 1895 onwards …We study whether international trade fosters democracy. The likely endogeneity between democracy and trade is addressed …. Late nineteenth century trade globalization may have helped generate the "first wave" of democratization. Between 1920 and …

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 …

We provide evidence that a history of democracy at the local level is associated with contemporary democracy at the … national level. Auxiliary estimates show that a tradition of local democracy is also associated with attitudes that favor … democracy, with better quality institutions, and higher level of economic development …

In this paper we revisit the relationship between democracy, redistribution and inequality. We first explain the … theoretical reasons why democracy is expected to increase redistribution and reduce inequality, and why this expectation may fail … to be realized when democracy is captured by the richer segments of the population; when it caters to the preferences of …

A majority of the world democracies are far from the benchmark of representative democracy. This paper presents a model … characterized by competitive elections. We show that the model can produce dynamics of transition into democracy without requiring …