英文摘要 |
While the third wave of democratization witnessed a historic increase in the number of democratic states by the late 1980s, the global trend toward democratization suffered setbacks at the end of the twentieth century. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the color revolutions and civil resistance movements in Tunisia and Egypt led to speculation about a possible fourth wave of democratization. Why did some countries successfully consolidate democracy at the end of the twentieth century while others have failed to do so? What was the relationship between mass civil resistance movements and democratic durability during this period? This paper explores the social origins of democratic consolidation by examining 64 transitional countries with mass civil resistance movements in the late twentieth century. The results show that states with strong civic coalitions which used nonviolent tactics to overthrow authoritarian rule had a better chance of achieving democratic consolidation. States which experienced significant violent conflict were less likely to consolidate democracy. An important finding of this study is that the level of economic development did not influence democratic consolidation directly, but had an indirect impact by influencing the likelihood of political violence during the transition period? |