Preconditions of Democracy: How forced democratization depends on transformation and state-building characteristics

Abstract

Military Democratic Intervention is a common strategy of foreign interaction especially since World War II. However, the question why some interventions are successful in implementing democracy and others are still not answered satisfactorily. Whereas the scientific debate so far focused on mission specific characteristics including variables such as personnel or financial equipment of interventions, the underlying assumption of this work is that external democratized countries need to exhibit the same preconditions as countries internally democratized. Therefore, the transition and state-building literature is investigated and five clusters of preconditions for successful democratization is developed. With a Qualitative Comparative Analysis, a dataset comprising 27 cases, eight variables and the outcome variable, the author provides evidence for the significance of all five clusters. Most importantly, the level of human development and modernization as well as the predecessor regime type and the experience with democratic experience strand out. Further, the combination of the variables of high GDP, an ethnically homogeneous society and a democratically ruled neighborhood are identified as variables sufficiently influencing successful democratization after a military intervention. These results...