Book Description
Abstract: In the past 25 years, democracy has spread throughout the globe. Many scholars have investigated the causes, implications, and prospects of this global movement towards democracy. Most of these scholars have emphasized internal political processes as the driving force of this movement, while eschewing international factors. I argue that international factors, specifically regional organizations, can have an important role in both the transition to and the consolidation of democracy. I elucidate several theoretically-derived causal mechanisms which could link regional organizations to the promotion and/or protection of democracy. Although the instruments which influence transitions to democracy, as opposed to the consolidation of democracy, differ, the end result is that these organizations can manipulate the costs and benefits of democracy to important societal groups such as business elites or the military. Moreover, I argue that these domestic elites will utilize membership in or accession to regional organizations to advance the cause of democracy. Regional organizations are thus an important policy tool for elites in these nascent democracies. I test this argument in two ways. First, I undertake two statistical analyses using a data set of all countries from 1950-1992. These analyses test for an association between regional organizations and both democratic transitions and democratic consolidation. Second, I investigate five cases (Hungary, Peru, Greece, Paraguay, and Turkey) to examine the actual causal processes behind any statistical association between regional organizations and democratization. I find that there is a strong statistical relationship between membership in certain regional organizations and transitions to democracy. I also find a strong relationship between joining these same regional organizations and the consolidation of democracy. The case studies illustrate that all of the hypothesized causal mechanisms function in at least one of the cases, although some are more common than others. These findings are not only important to international relations theory and comparative politics, but provide loose guidelines for policy-makers who wish to utilize these regional organizations to promote and/or protect democracy.