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A Global Trend Toward Democratic Convergence? A Lijphartian Analysis of Advanced Democracies
Journal article   Peer reviewed

A Global Trend Toward Democratic Convergence? A Lijphartian Analysis of Advanced Democracies

A. Vatter, M. Flinders and J. Bernauer
Comparative Political Studies, Vol.47(6), pp.903-929
2014
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Abstract

The article offers a systematic analysis of the comparative trajectory of international democratic change. In particular, it focuses on the resulting convergence or divergence of political systems, borrowing from the literatures on institutional change and policy convergence. To this end, political-institutional data in line with Arend Lijphart’s (1999, 2012) empirical theory of democracy for 24 developed democracies between 1945 and 2010 are analyzed. Heteroscedastic multilevel models allow for directly modeling the development of the variance of types of democracy over time, revealing information about convergence, and adding substantial explanations. The findings indicate that there has been a trend away from extreme types of democracy in single cases, but no unconditional trend of convergence can be observed. However, there are conditional processes of convergence. In particular, economic globalization and the domestic veto structure interactively influence democratic convergence.

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#10 Reduced Inequalities

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Citation topics
6 Social Sciences
6.27 Political Science
6.27.157 Political Representation
Web Of Science research areas
Political Science
ESI research areas
Social Sciences, general
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