The theory of democratic development

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Theories of democratic development address themselves to two distinct though related questions: What are the common pathways that all of today's democracies have had to pursue to emerge out of nondemocratic feudalisms into democracy? And, what conditions must be met by newly emergent democracies if they are to endure and achieve stability? Political histories of democracies typically pursue the question of emergence whereas modern analytic studies tend to focus on the conditions of stabilization.' Of all the recent theoretical works in the field, Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy2 stands out as the major effort to answer both sets of questions. In a generally laudatory review, Ronald Dore says of Moore's work that "anyone who has harbored the fantasy of spending some years licking the recent social and political history of the world into some sort of intelligible shape ... will read Barrington Moore's book with envy."3 Even Moore's most acerbic critics have acknowledged that his work is the predominant one in the field. One of them, Joseph Femia, states that Moore's book "has been the most challenging, influential and highly touted of all the writing examining the prerequisites of democracy."4 Another, Stanley Rothman, notes that "it is not hard to find reasons why Barrington Moore's Social Origins has had such widespread influence. ... Its approach, that of comparative historical sociology, seeks clues to the present in the past, and Moore demonstrates mastery of a wide range of historical materials."5