Extreme bounds of democracy

What determines the emergence and survival of democracy? The authors apply extreme bounds analysis to test the robustness of fifty-nine factors proposed in the literature, evaluating over three million regressions with data from 165 countries from 1976 to 2002. The most robust determinants of the transition to democracy are gross domestic product (GDP) growth (a negative effect), past transitions (a positive effect), and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development membership (a positive effect). There is some evidence that fuel exporters and Muslim countries are less likely to see democracy emerge, although the latter finding is driven entirely by oil-producing Muslim countries. Regarding the survival of democracy, the most robust determinants are GDP per capita (a positive effect) and past transitions (a negative effect). There is some evidence that having a former military leader as the chief executive has a negative effect, while having other democracies as neighbors has a reinforcing effect.

NGOs, elite capture and community-driven development: perspectives in rural Mozambique

This article examines the problems of elite capture in community driven development (CDD). Drawing on two case studies of non-governmental organisation (NGO) intervention in rural Mozambique, the authors consider two important variables – 1) the diverse and complex contributions of local elites to CDD in different locations, and 2) the roles that non-elites play in monitoring and controlling leader activities – to argue that donors should be cautious about automatically assuming the prevalence of malevolent patrimonialism and its ill-effects in their projects. This is because the ‘checks and balances’ on elite behaviour that exist within locally-defined and historically-rooted forms of community-based governance are likely to be more effective than those introduced by the external intervener.