COLONIAL ORIGINS OF DEMOCRACY AND DICTATORSHIP

LEE Alexander, PAINE Jack

ISBN 10: 1009423533 / ISBN 13: 9781009423533

Published by Cambridge University Press, 2024. 9781009423533, 2024

About this Item

1st edn. 8vo. Original gilt lettered black cloth (Fine), dustwrapper (Fine). Pp. xiii + 299, with b&w illus (no inscriptions).

Seller Inventory # 182716

Bibliographic Details

• Title: COLONIAL ORIGINS OF DEMOCRACY AND DICTATORSHIP
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2024. 9781009423533
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009423533
• ISBN 13: 9781009423533
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Seller catalogs:
  • Modern History

About this title

Synopsis

Why are some countries more democratic than others? For most non-European countries, elections began under Western colonial rule. However, existing research largely overlooks these democratic origins. Analyzing a global sample of colonies across four centuries, this book explains the emergence of colonial electoral institutions and their lasting impact. The degree of democracy in the metropole, the size of the white settler population, and pressure from non-Europeans all shaped the timing and form of colonial elections. White settlers and non-white middle classes educated in the colonizer's language usually gained early elections but settler minorities resisted subsequent franchise expansion. Authoritarian metropoles blocked elections entirely. Countries with lengthy exposure to competitive colonial institutions tended to consolidate democracies after independence. By contrast, countries with shorter electoral episodes usually shed democratic institutions and countries that were denied colonial elections consolidated stable dictatorships. Regime trajectories shaped by colonial rule persist to the present day.

About the Authors

Alexander Lee is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester. He earned his Ph.D. from Stanford and his BA from Yale. His research focuses on the factors governing the success or failure of political institutions, especially the historical evolution of state capacity, the political economy of South Asia and the causes and consequences of identity politics. He is the author of The Cartel System of States: An Economic Theory of International Politics ( 2022), From Hierarchy to Ethnicity: The Politics of Caste in Twentieth-Century India (2020) and Development in Multiple Dimensions: Social Power and Regional Policy in India (2019).

Jack Paine is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Emory University. He earned his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and his BA from the University of Virginia. His research analyses the origins of political regimes, how they survive, and when they break down into conflict. In addition to colonial origins, he studies the strategic foundations of authoritarian power sharing, the guardianship dilemma, and democratic backsliding.