> A slightly different question: > > Which is more resistant to transformation to the > other, a democracy or a > dictatorship? Or are they about the same? > > -- > Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/
Interestingly enough, there's a fair bit of work on this topic. Above a certain point of wealth (~$6,000 per capita income in 1986 dollars, I believe) the correlation is perfect - no democracy has become a dictatorship since the Second World War. The wealthiest country to "slip back" is either Chile or Argentina, I don't remember which. There's a pretty clear function linking wealth and democracy - the wealthier a country is, the higher its chances of remaining a democracy. Over the last few decades, democracies have been considerably more resilient than dictatorships - although states have moved both ways, overwhelmingly more have moved dictatorship to democracy than democracy to dictatorship. On the whole, democracy appears to be surprisingly resilient in general. Two good articles on this topic, which may be available online, are: Larry Diamond's "Universal Democracy?" in Policy Review, June/July 2003 Michael D. Ward and Kristian S. Gleditsch, "Democratizing for Peace", in American Political Science Review, 92, March 1998 Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site! http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
