Are the factors that initiate democratization the same as those that maintain a democracy already established? The scholarly as well as policy debates over this question have never been more urgent. In 1970, Dankwart A. Rustow’s clairvoyant article “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model” questioned the conflation of the primary causes as well as sustaining conditions of democracy as well as democratization. Now this collection of essays by distinguished scholars responds to as well as extends Rustow’s classic work, Transitions to Democracy–which originated as a special issue of the journal Comparative Politics as well as contains three new articles written especially for this volume–represents much of the current state of the large as well as growing literature on democratization in American political science. The essays simultaneously illustrate the remarkable reach of Rustow’s prescient article across the decades as well as reveal what the intervening years have taught us
In light of the enormous opportunities of the post-Cold War world for the promotion of democratic government in parts of the world once thought hopelessly lost of authoritarian as well as totalitarian regimes, this timely collection constitutes as well as important contribution to the debates as well as efforts to promote the more open, responsive, as well as accountable government we associate with democracy
