Democratization

Democratization, or democratisation, is the democratic transition to a more democratic political regime, including substantive political changes moving in a democratic direction. Whether and to what extent democratization occurs can be influenced by various factors, including economic development, historical legacies, civil society, and international processes. Some accounts of democratization emphasize how elites drove democratization, whereas other accounts emphasize grassroots bottom-up processes. How democratization occurs has also been used to explain other political phenomena, such as whether a country goes to a war or whether its economy grows. The opposite process is known as democratic backsliding or autocratization. Theories of democratization seek to explain a large macro-level change of a political regime from authoritarianism to democracy. Symptoms of democratization include reform of the electoral system, increased suffrage and reduced political apathy. Democracy indices enable the quantitative assessment of democratization. Some common democracy indices are V-Dem Democracy indices and Democracy Index. Democracy indices can distinguish between different high-level principles of democracy: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, egalitarian, and other. Democracy indices can be quantitative or categorical. Some disagreements among scholars concern the concept of democracy and how to measure democracy - and what democracy indices should be used. One way to summarize the outcome theories of democratization seek to account is with the idea of waves of democratization A wave of democratization refers to a major surge of democracy in history. And Samuel P. Huntington identified three waves of democratization that have taken place in history. The first one brought democracy to Western Europe and Northern America in the 19th century. It was followed by a rise of dictatorships during the Interwar period. The second wave began after World War II, but lost steam between 1962 and the mid-1970s.