Why Democracies Develop and Decline

Michael Coppedge · Amanda B. Edgell · Carl Henrik Knutsen · Staffan I. Lindberg

Jun. 2022 · Cambridge University Press

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The Varieties of Democracy project (V-Dem) pioneered new ways to conceptualize and measure democracy, producing a multidimensional and disaggregated data set on democracy around the world that is now widely used by researchers, activists, and governments. Why Democracies Develop and Decline draws on this data to present a comprehensive overview and rigorous empirical tests of the factors that contribute to democratization and democratic decline, looking at economic, social, institutional, geographic, and international factors. It is the most authoritative and encompassing empirical analysis of the causes of democratization and reversals. The volume also proposes a comprehensive theoretical framework and presents an up-to-date description of global democratic developments from the French Revolution to the present. Each chapter leverages the specialized expertise of its authors, yet their sustained collaboration lends the book an unusually unified approach and a coherent theory and narrative.

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Michael Coppedge is Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He is a principal investigator of the Varieties of Democracy project, the author of Democratization and Research Methods (2012), and co-author of Varieties of Democracy: Measuring Two Centuries of Political Change (2020).

Amanda B. Edgell is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Alabama. She works on the politics of regime transformation, authoritarianism, political inclusion, and African politics. Her work has appeared in several peer-reviewed journals, including the British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research, Democratization, and African Studies Review.

Carl Henrik Knutsen is Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo and leads the Comparative Institutions and Regimes (CIR) research group. He is also Research Professor at PRIO, and a principal investigator of Varieties of Democracy and several research projects, including an ERC Consolidator Grant on autocratic politics, and co-author of Varieties of Democracy: Measuring Two Centuries of Political Change (2020).

Staffan I. Lindberg is Professor of Political Science and Director of the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He is a principal Investigator of the Varieties of Democracy project as well as several other projects, a Wallenberg Academy Fellow, author of Democracy and Elections in Africa (2006), and co-author of Varieties of Democracy: Measuring Two Centuries of Political Change (2020).