The Structural Determinants of Democratic Consolidation

Democratic consolidation is the process by which a newly established democratic regime becomes sufficiently durable that a return to nondemocratic rule is no longer likely. The authors examine a wide range of structural factors that may affect democratic consolidation in Third World countries, using three indicators of consolidation and multivariate statistical techniques. The authors' main finding is that development-related socioeconomic factors, the contagion effect of democratic neighbors, and high inflation each strongly affect the likelihood of consolidation, although the latter was significant only in the early part of the period studied. Several other factors have no apparent effect, including several measures dealing with political culture and the design of democratic institutions. These three factors together strongly predict which Third World democracies achieve consolidation, suggesting that the process-centric literature on democratic consolidation has paid inadequate attention to the effects of structural factors.