Against the Odds: Deviant Cases of Democratization

Abstract

Economic development and diffusion effects appear to exert substantial influence on the success of democratization. However, large-N quantitative studies also show that there are some ‘outliers’, or ‘deviant’ cases, which do not fit the general pattern and cannot be explained by existing theories and models. It appears that deviant cases of democratization include Costa Rica and India (since the 1940s), Botswana (since the 1960s) and Benin and Mongolia (since the 1990s). This introduction focuses on important conceptual, theoretical, and methodological problems involved when studying them. We first look at the highly contested concept of democracy and place ‘deviant democracies’ in the framework of a minimal definition of democracy and transition waves. We also provide a working definition for two other highly contested concepts – democratic transition and democratic consolidation. We then go on to briefly review existing general theories of democratization. By doing so, we lay the ground for specifying more precisely the level of ‘deviancy’ of our cases, and offer potential explanations for their unusually successful process of democratization. Finally, we outline the nested mixed method, the logic of which we follow in this special issue.