Democracy in hard places / edited by Scott Mainwaring.

How does democracy persist for long periods of time in countries that are poor, ethnically heterogenous, wracked by economic crisis, and plagued by state weakness? In Democracy in Hard Places, leading scholars of comparative political regimes attempt to answer this question by examining cases of unl...

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Bibliographic Details
Online Access: Full Text (via Oxford)
Other Authors: Masoud, Tarek E (Editor)
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2022.
Series:Oxford Academic.
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Description
Summary:How does democracy persist for long periods of time in countries that are poor, ethnically heterogenous, wracked by economic crisis, and plagued by state weakness? In Democracy in Hard Places, leading scholars of comparative political regimes attempt to answer this question by examining cases of unlikely democratic survival in "hard places": countries that lack the structural factors and exist outside of the contexts that scholars have long associated with democracy's emergence and endurance. Democracies in hard places overcome underdevelopment, ethnolinguistic diversity, state weakness, and patriarchal cultural norms. The book offers rich, empirically grounded theoretical debates about whether democracy survives only because a balance of power and formal institutions constrain actors from overthrowing it, or if it also survives in part because some critical actors are normatively committed to it. The book presents nine case studies-written by leading experts in the discipline-of episodes in which democracy has emerged and survived against long odds. The cases are drawn from almost every region of the world that formed part of the "third wave" of democracy. In each case, many of the conditions conventionally associated with durable democracy were either attenuated or absent. Each case study details the constellation of obstacles to democracy faced by a given country, describes the major political actors with the potential to impact regime trajectories, and explains how the threat of democratic breakdown was staved off or averted.
Item Description:Includes Includes bibliographical references and index.
Physical Description:329 pages : illustrations(black and white)
ISBN:9780197598795
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780197598757.001.0001