Mark J. Gasiorowski

Bio: Mark J. Gasiorowski is an academic researcher from Tulane University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Democratization & Democracy. The author has an hindex of 17, co-authored 32 publications receiving 2095 citations. Previous affiliations of Mark J. Gasiorowski include University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill & Louisiana State University.

Economic Crisis and Political Regime Change: An Event History Analysis

Abstract: I examine the effect of economic crises on domestic political regime change. Using a statistical technique known as event history analysis and a new data set that identifies all instances of regime change in the 97 largest Third World countries, I develop multivariate models of democratic breakdown and democratic transition. My main findings are that inflationary crises inhibited democratization from the 1950s through the early 1970s but may have facilitated it in the late 1980s and that recessionary crises facilitated democratic breakdown but had no effect on democratic transition throughout this period. The inflation findings—though not the recession findings—support the arguments of Karen Remmer and Samuel Huntington that the processes affecting democratization were very different in the 1980s than in earlier eras. A number of other explanatory variables emerge as significant determinants of regime change, providing support for several other contentions that have appeared in the literature.

The Structural Determinants of Democratic Consolidation: Evidence from the Third World

Abstract: 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 wi...

Institutional Design and Democratic Consolidation in the Third World

Abstract: Recent scholarship on democratization has produced several dominant hypotheses concerning the role of institutional design in promoting stable democracy. This article tests these hypotheses by exam...

Economic Interdependence and International Conflict: Some Cross-national Evidence

Abstract: This study examines the relationship between economic interdependence and international conflict. Two schools of thought exist on this issue: some prominent writers suggest that interdependence produces greater international conflict, while others suggest that it produces a decline in conflict. These arguments are reviewed and empirically tested here. Previous empirical studies bearing on this issue are found to use inadequate measures and biased samples. More comprehensive analyses presented here suggest that interdependence can have mixed consequences. Several measures of interdependence that embody its costly aspects are found to be positively associated with conflict, implying that interdependence produces increased international conflict. However, when these measures are controlled for, another key measure is found to be inversely related to conflict. This suggests that both schools of thought may be correct: while the costly aspects of interdependence seem to produce greater international conflict, its beneficial aspects appear to produce a decline in conflict. In recent years, international interdependence has emerged as an important phenomenon in world poiitics and a popular concept in the international relations literature. International issues as diverse as trade embargoes, environmental degradation, nuclear arms races, and the transmission of inflation have been grouped together under the rubric of interdependence. Early writers on interdependence, such as Cooper (1968), focused mainly on the problems it creates for domestic and foreign economic policymaking. More recently, a number of studies have appeared that examine the implications of interdependence for international politics. The most influential of these has been Keohane and Nye (1977). However, other than a few studies that examine whether interdependence is increasing or declining worldwide, I no broad, comparative analyses of the impact of interdependence on international politics

An Overview of the Political Regime Change Dataset

Abstract: This article describes the conceptual foundations and coding procedures used in developing the Political Regime Change Dataset. This dataset identifies the dates of transition among democratic, semidemocratic, authoritarian, and transitional regimes in the 97 largest Third World countries, covering periods beginning with the date at which each country became independent or established a modern state and continuing through 1992. These transition dates can be used to generate time series indicating which of these types of regime existed in each country at any given time during the periods covered by the dataset. This article gives the distribution of regime changes across time and geographical regions and compares the Political Regime Change Dataset with several other widely used measures of regimes. A complete listing of the data is included in the appendix.

Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence

Abstract: This book demonstrates that people's basic values and beliefs are changing, in ways that affect their political, sexual, economic, and religious behaviour. These changes are roughly predictable: to a large extent, they can be interpreted on the basis of a revised version of modernisation theory presented here. Drawing on a massive body of evidence from societies containing 85 percent of the world's population, the authors demonstrate that modernisation is a process of human development, in which economic development gives rise to cultural changes that make individual autonomy, gender equality, and democracy increasingly likely. The authors present a model of social change that predicts how the value systems play a crucial role in the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions - and that modernisation brings coherent cultural changes that are conducive to democratisation.

Democracy and dictatorship revisited

Abstract: We address the strengths and weaknesses of the main available measures of political regime and extend the dichotomous regime classification first introduced in Alvarez et al. (Stud. Comp. Int. Dev. 31(2):3–36, 1996). This extension focuses on how incumbents are removed from office. We argue that differences across regime measures must be taken seriously and that they should be evaluated in terms of whether they (1) serve to address important research questions, (2) can be interpreted meaningfully, and (3) are reproducible. We argue that existing measures of democracy are not interchangeable and that the choice of measure should be guided by its theoretical and empirical underpinnings. We show that the choice of regime measure matters by replicating studies published in leading journals.

The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and their Critics

Abstract: The state has always been difficult to define. Its boundary with society appears elusive, porous, and mobile. I argue that this elusiveness should not be overcome by sharper definitions, but explored as a clue to the state's nature. Analysis of the literature shows that neither rejecting the state in favor of such concepts as the political system, nor “bringing it back in,” has dealt with this boundary problem. The former approach founders on it, the latter avoids it by a narrow idealism that construes the state-society distinction as an external relation between subjective and objective entities. A third approach, presented here, can account for both the salience of the state and its elusiveness. Reanalyzing evidence presented by recent theorists, state-society boundaries are shown to be distinctions erected internally, as an aspect of more complex power relations. Their appearance can be historically traced to technical innovations of the modern social order, whereby methods of organization and control internal to the social processes they govern create the effect of a state structure external to those processes.

Tracking Democracy's Third Wave with the Polity III Data

Abstract: This article reports and analyzes an updated version of the widely-used Polity II dataset, consisting of annual indicators of institutional democracy and autocracy for 161 states spanning the years from 1946 through 1994. The validity of the Polity III indicators of regime type is supported by their strong correlations (.85 to .92) with seven conceptually and operationally different indicators of democracy developed by other researchers. Comparative analysis of global and regional trends in democracy shows the extent to which the Middle East and Africa lag behind other world regions in the transition to democracy. A series of challenges to the `third wave' of democratization are identified, with particular attention paid to the large numbers of institutionally unconsolidated, or `incoherent', polities that have recently emerged, mainly due to attempts by autocratic elites to contain domestic and international pressures to liberalize their regimes.

A Theory of Political Transitions

Abstract: We develop a theory of political transitions inspired in part by the experiences of Western Europe and Latin America. Nondemocratic societies are controlled by a rich elite. The initially disenfranchised poor can contest power by threatening social unrest or revolution and this may force the elite to democratize. Democracy may not consolidate because it is more redistributive than a nondemocratic regime, and this gives the elite an incentive to mount a coup. Because inequality makes democracy more costly for the elite, highly unequal societies are less likely to consolidate democracy and may end up oscillating between regimes or in a nondemocratic repressive regime. An unequal society is likely to experience fiscal volatility, but the relationship between inequality and redistribution is nonmonotonic; societies with intermediate levels of inequality consolidate democracy and redistribute more than both very equal and very unequal countries. We also show that asset redistribution, such as educational and land reform, may be used to consolidate both democratic and nondemocratic regimes.