Initial Factors Behind the Third Wave of Democratization

We identify permanent democratic transitions during the Third Wave of Democratization and the nineties, when many former socialist countries moved towards representative rule. Using subjective political freedom indicators, electoral archives, and historical resources in 174 countries in the period 1960-2005, we identify 63 incidents of permanent democratic transitions, 3 reverse transitions from relatively stable democracy to autocracy and 6 episodes of small improvements in representative norms (borderline democratizations). We also classify non-reforming countries to stable autocracies and always democratic. We then use the constructed dataset to identify the significant correlates of successful democratic transitions, placing an emphasis to those countries that were non-democratic in the beginning of the Third Wave.