The Challenges of Civil Resistance Transitions

What are the effects of nonviolent (civil) resistance on political transitions? This chapter examines what we know about the relationship between nonviolent resistance and political order and uses that established knowledge to argue for a novel theory of civil resistance transitions. Civil resistance gives countries a democratic advantage relative to other ways of initiating a political transition. But that advantage must be carried through the uncertainty of the transitional period. Two key challenges can undermine this advantage: a failure to maintain high levels of social and political mobilization and a failure to direct mobilization away from revolutionary maximalist goals and tactics into new institutional avenues. The chapter details the mechanisms of civil resistance transitions that these challenges undermine and the unique regime types that variation in these challenges leads to.

The Democratic Advantage by the Numbers

This chapter examines quantitative evidence for a link between a state’s domestic political institutions and its power in the international system. Using standard international relations datasets, it finds significant support for the democratic advantage idea. It is notable how often democracies appear at or near the top of global power rankings. And this is even more remarkable when one considers how historically rare this form of government has been. This chapter finds that, on average, democracies possess more power than autocracies. It reveals that they are more likely to find themselves among the major powers and at the very top of the global distribution of power. Finally, it also demonstrates that, when comparing democratic and autocratic competitors from a common baseline and watching their power trajectories unfold over time, the trend-lines favor democracies. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the research design for the case studies to follow.

The Democratic Advantage in Theory

This chapter puts forth the argument that democracies enjoy built-in advantages in long-run geopolitical competitions. It begins by defining key terms, such as “democracy” and “autocracy.” Then, drawing on the writing of political philosophers, such as Herodotus, Machiavelli, and Montesquieu, and contemporary social science research, this chapter explains the unique economic, diplomatic, and military advantages that democracies bring to the international arena. These advantages include: higher long-run rates of economic growth, access to international capital, larger and more reliable alliances, and a tendency to win international wars. It then explains how these advantages grant democracies an edge in amassing wealth and power, becoming great powers, and achieving global hegemony at rates greater than their autocratic rivals.

Contingent Advantage? Sovereign Borrowing, Democratic Institutions and Global Capital Cycles

How do domestic and global factors shape governments’ capacity to issue debt in primary capital markets? Consistent with the ‘democratic advantage’, we identify domestic institutional mechanisms, including executive constraints and policy transparency, that facilitate debt issuance rather than electoral events. Most importantly, we argue that the democratic advantage is contingent: investors’ attention to domestic politics varies with conditions in global capital markets. When global financial liquidity is low, investors are risk-averse, and political risk constrains governments’ capacity to borrow. But when global markets are flush, investors are risk-tolerant and less sensitive to political risk. We support our argument with new data on 245,000 government bond issues in primary capital markets – the point at which governments’ costs of market access matter most – for 131 sovereign issuers (1990–2016). In doing so, we highlight the role of systemic factors, which are under-appreciated in much ‘open economy politics’ research, in determining access to capital markets.

Reassessing the democratic advantage in interstate wars using k-adic datasets

Numerous studies have used monadic or dyadic data to show that democracies are more likely to win wars. Poast (2010; Political Analysis 18(4): 403–425) demonstrates that the use of dyadic data to model events that are really multilateral (or k-adic) can bias the statistical results. In this article, I discuss the potential consequences of that bias for previous studies on democracy and war outcomes. Then I replicate some of those studies using modified, k-adic versions of the original datasets. Finally, I conduct an original analysis using the updated dataset on wars by Reiter et al. (2014a; Journal of Conflict Resolution; doi: 10.1177/0022002714553107). Overall, I find several changes when using k-adic data. Most significantly, the relationship between democracy and war outcomes appears to be strongest for states that join the war effort after it has already started.