To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions

Is democracy a hot-house plant? Is it difficult to transplant it into new soil? The fall of so many dictatorships in the last few years—first in Southern Europe, then in Latin America, now in Eastern Europe—opens new, more optimistic perspectives on democratic development. The crises of dictatorships and the search for a new political order offer fertile ground for an examination of how best to effect democratic transitions.

By focusing on the objective conditions that make democracy probabl...