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  • In recent articles Kurzman and Dorenspleet have shown that Huntington's original periodization of the "Third Wave" of democratization needs to be corrected . Although Huntington dates the beginning of the Third Wave to the mid 1970s, neither Kurzman nor Doorenspleet find evidence of an unusual increase in the proportion of the world's democracies before the late 1980s. Instead, a sharply distinctive "explosion of democratization" occurred within a narrow time span from the late 1980s to the early 1990s : more than 70 per cent of the shifts toward democracy that Huntington calls "The Third Wave" occurred in this much shorter period. So far, the role of modernization has not been analyzed with particular regard to this distinctive phase of democratization. Among recent studies of the modernization-democratization linkage only few authors explicitly analyze changes to democracy instead of levels of democracy . As we will demonstrate, even these few authors operate with an inappropriate time frame, so that the most significant regime changes between 1985 and 1995 slip through their net. Thus, the claims of modernization theory have not been examined for their most outstanding test case. It is still an open question whether modernization theory does apply to the global "explosion of democracy." To give an answer to this question is the purpose of this article. Modernization refers to naturally evolving processes in economic structure and political culture. Typically, these processes are continuous, incremental, and path dependent, producing persistent developmental differences between nations . Democratization, on the other hand, is a process that occurs rapidly, in distinct waves that sweep across many nations . While it takes decades for nations to move from low to high levels of modernization, they can leap literally overnight from autocracy to democracy. Abruptness is one profound characteristic of democratization waves. Another one is that they follow major changes on the international scene, especially shifts of regime alliances . Abruptness and shifting regime alliances limit the extent to which modernization can explain transitions to democracy. Modernization is an endogenous and long-term characteristic of societies which can not explain the suddenness and the internationality of democratization waves. Modernization as such does not create the situations that favor international waves of democratization. Historically, these situations resulted from shifts of regime alliances when autocratic empires, such as those of Germany and Japan, were defeated and dissolved in Word War II. The recent "explosion of democracy," too, was preceded by a shift of regime alliances. In the 1970s western powers still supported many autocratic regimes, such as that of Marcos in the Philippines or Noriega in Panama. Not until the early 1980s did this policy began to change. The US and the EU provided financial support for democratic movements in authoritarian states, and the World Bank began to tie credits to conditions of "good governance" . Western-oriented autocracies lost international support from the mid 1980s onwards. Communist autocracies suffered from a similar loss, though this happened in a much more incisive way when Gorbachev nullified the Brezhnev doctrine in 1987. These changes in both East and West reduced international support for autocracies, helping trigger the global "explosion of democracy" from 1985 to 1995. Yet, shifts of regime alliances are only part of the explanation. The end of the Brezhnev doctrine helps explain why communism broke suddenly down in societies that have once been under Soviet control. But the end of the Brezhnev doctrine does not account for the huge variations in changes to democracy, ranging from the small improvements in Belarus to the large ones in Poland. The international factor does not make modernization irrelevant. Instead, the international setting opens windows of opportunity through which modernization can operate. Modernization can be blocked from having an impact on political regimes by external support of autocracy. But once that support is withdrawn, the gate is open. Then, cross-national differences in modernization-which seemed to be irrelevant for decades-may suddenly become consequential in creating corresponding variations in changes to democracy. This poses the question: "To what extent do persistent variations in modernization levels explain sudden variations of regime changes?" This is what modernization could explain. Whether it does will be analyzed in this article. We begin with a discussion why recent findings about the role of modernization in transitions to democracy are inconclusive. On the basis of this critique we unfold an argument why mass-level liberty aspirations, as an indicator cultural modernization, are the most powerful predictor of transitions to democracy. This claim is tested in subsequent sections, controlling for numerous factors which are considered as important in the democratization literature. The effect remains robust against all kinds of control. We then demonstrate that liberty aspirations do not depend on prior democratic experience. This invalidates the counter-argument of a reverse causation between liberty aspirations and democracy. Liberty aspirations do not simply reflect experience with democracy; they derive primarily from economic modernization. Finally, we discuss our findings within the broader theoretical framework of Human Development. This leads to a more general understanding of the causal mechanisms in the modernization-democratization linkage. Research on the relation between modernization and democratization has a long tradition. 1 Most studies in this field define modernization as economic development, using various indicators linked with economic growth, rising education and communication and increasing social diversification. Many analyses have shown a robust positive relation between economic development and levels of democracy. Following the Marxian notion that regime institutions reflect socioeconomic structures, the prevailing causal interpretation of these correlations is that democracy results from economic development rather than the reverse . Few empirical studies, however, deal explicitly with transitions to democracy. Most studies analyze levels of democracy at a given time or the number of years under democratic rule, leaving it uncertain whether modernization only sustains existing democracies, or whether modernization also promotes the rise of new democracies. Recognizing this question, make an important contribution by explicitly analyzing the emergence of democracies (and autocracies, respectively). They use a dichotomous regime measure to estimate the probability that a regime switches from autocracy to democracy, or the reverse. They conclude that modernization helps account for the survival of existing democracies, but not the emergence of democracies from autocracies. Though this finding has attained wide prominence, it is dubious in several respects. First and foremost, it seems to rest on a misinterpretation of Przeworski/Limongi's own data. The authors draw their conclusion from the finding that, in the period since 1950, the probability of autocracies shifting to democracy does not increase with higher levels of eco-nomic development. But this is only half of the story. The first column of their shows that the probability of shifts in the opposite does also not increase with rising income levels. Instead, the probability of democracies to switch to autocracy decreases steeply when income levels grow . Thus, the crucial question concerns the probability balance of switches to democracy and autocracy: how large is the probability of switches to democracy compared with switches to autocracy as income levels rise? One can easily calculate from Przeworski/Limongi's figures that this ratio changes monotonically in favor of switches to democracy with rising income levels: in very poor countries (below $1,000), autocracies are only one tenth as likely to switch to democracy as democracies to autocracy; while in very rich countries (above $7,000) autocracies are 28 times likelier to switch to democracy than democracies to autocracy. This is demonstrated by the following ratios, calculated from Przeworski and Limongi's table: Probability of autocracies switching to democracy a divided by probability of democracies switching to autocracy b Below $1,000 0.10 $1,001-2,000 0.24 $2,001-3,000 0.64 $3,001-4,000 1.50 $4,001-5,000 3.13 $5,001-6,000 6.25 $6,001-7,000 11.75 Over $7,000 28.33 a P AD in of . b P DA op. cit. There is growing preponderance of transitions to democracy over the opposite with rising income levels. Przeworski/Limongi's conclusion that transitions to democracy occur randomly is obviously flawed, even in view of their own data. A second problem in Przeworski and Limongi's analysis is that they use a dichotomous measure of democracy. They assume that democracy reflects some minimal criterion, such as holding free elections: with it, democracy is present; without it, there is autocracy. But this is an over simplification, since most contemporary regimes fall into a gray area between maximum democracy and autocracy. A society's location on this continuum cannot be captured by a dichotomous measure. Even among regimes that would count as democracies by some minimal criteria, there are substantial differences in important aspects, such as freedom of the press, fairness of elections and the extent of human rights. Though a democracy by some minimal criteria, India does not perform as well as Japan in these aspects. Conversely, regimes that might be labeled autocracies because they do not hold free elections, show substantial differences in their repressiveness. Even during the PRI hegemony, Mexico was not as repressive as China is today. Such differences can only be captured by graded measures of democratic performance. Przeworski and Limongi's methodological argument for using a dichotomous measure is similarly unconvincing. They argue that dichotomous measures have a smaller error variance than graded measures. This is true but the crucial question is how large the error variance is in relation to the total variance. Graded measures show a larger error variance but a larger total variance as well, so the ratio between these variances is not necessarily worse in graded measures. Quite the contrary, Elkins' analysis indicates that graded measures tend to have a better "nomological validity" . Third, Przeworski and Limongi completely neglect the cultural dimension of modernization. This is a serious shortcoming in their account of modernization. From Lipset onward, it has been argued that economic modernization has a positive impact on democracy because it leads to changes in mass attitudes that undermine autocracy and foster democracy . Often described as "civic culture" or "cultural modernity" , modern attitudes include tolerance, generalized trust, ideological moderation, subjective well-being, and an emphasis on individual self-expression . Cultural modernization seems to be the intervening variable between economic modernization and democracy . Logically this should be true. Democratization is a product of collective action, and collective action is guided by collective preferences that are embedded in political cultures ). The impact of economic modernization on democratization, therefore, should operate through its impact on cultural modernization. Surprisingly at first glance, empirical evidence supporting this thesis is scarce. Analyzing 24 societies from the first World Values Survey, Muller and Seligson found little evidence that modern mass attitudes promoted shifts toward democracy from 1972-80 to 1981-90 . Similarly, Inglehart's analyses of 43 societies from the second World Values Survey found that subjective well-being and interpersonal trust were conducive to high levels of democracy, but had no significant effect on changes toward democracy from 1990 to 1995 .1). These findings seem to contradict modernization theory. We will demonstrate, however, that these findings are inconclusive because of misspecifications of the dependent and independent variables. Both Muller/Seligson and Inglehart use the sum of the civil liberties and political rights scores from Freedom House as a measure for the level of democracy over a given period. Regime change is then operationalized by comparing the levels at two different periods. The first problem with both analyses is based on the timing of the change measure. Muller and Seligson attempt to analyze change in democracy levels by regressing democracy levels averaged over 1981-1990 on the average democracy levels in 1972-1980. But the difference in democracy levels between these periods represents the historic course of democratic transitions inadequately. The vast majority of the world's new democracies experienced the most significant regime changes in the period between 1985 and 1995. Muller/Seligson's analysis, however, groups the first half of the transition period together with another period during which most of the new democracies were autocratic, averaging out the most significant changes. Even worse, Muller/Seligson's analysis completely skips the second half of the transition period . Consider Chile's Freedom House scores: the most salient feature of recent Chilean history is the rapid rise in democratic performance from an extremely low level in 1987 to a very high level in 1990. How is this represented in Muller/Seligson's measure? Comparing Chile's democracy level during 1972-80 with that in 1981-90 reveals little change. The rise in democratic performance from 1987-90 is averaged with the poor performance of the late Pinochet-period; while the early Pinochet-period is offset by the much better democratic performance before Allende's death. Mixed together this way, some of the most crucial regime changes in the late twentieth century are buried. The choice of time periods is crucial, and should take the important Third Wave into account; Muller and Seligson's choice of periods seems completely arbitrary. Inglehart avoids averaging democracy scores over long periods of time. He creates a change variable by calculating the difference in democracy levels between 1995 and 1990. This time frame, also, ignores the first half of the major transition period . The dramatic changes in the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Chile are obscured by this measure. Moreover, Inglehart's analysis does not control for the different levels of democracy at which given societies enter the period of change. This is a serious problem, since a society's entry-level of democracy limits the possible range of change toward more democracy. Societies that are already close to the maximum on democratic performance, have no chance of substantial improvement. Even if the presence of a modernized culture were the sole cause of democratization, it would be perfectly possible to find a negative correlation between cultural modernization and rising levels of democracy: the societies with the most modernized cultures would show the smallest change toward democracy-since they adopted high levels of democracy already earlier. To conclude that cultural modernization is detrimental to democratization would be a serious misinterpretation in this case. Another methodological problem is that most authors who use the Freedom House scores for civil liberties and political rights simply add them up, producing an average of the two measures. It is more effective, however, to use the product of these scores, rather than the sum. This is true because many countries have shown substantially more improvement in their scores on political rights, than in their scores on civil liberties. The proportion of the world's countries with the highest scores (6 or 7) on the political rights scale increased from 24 to 46 per cent between 1972 and 1998, while the corresponding group in the civil liberties scale increased only from 23 to 33 per cent. 2 This phenomenon is apparent in the upper plot in . This figure shows the number of countries that moved at least two points upwards on the Freedom House scales, minus the number that moved downwards, for each year since 1972. The results are shown separately for political rights and civil liberties. Scores above zero indicate how many more countries moved upwards than downwards. As is evident, the trends for political rights and civil liberties do not necessarily coincide. Especially in the major transition phase, the gains for civil liberties are substantially lower than those for political rights. If civil liberties and political rights interact to produce democracy, one should not allow high scores on one to compensate for low scores on the other. We avoid this by using their products. Doing otherwise, obscures the difference between merely "electoral" and genuine "liberal" democracies . Some dubious democracies, such as Peru under Fujimori, show an embellished performance when we use the average instead of the product score: These countries perform fairly well on political rights but not on civil liberties. Averaging these discrepancies out, ignores the fact that limitations on civil liberties may render political rights ineffective. In this way, authoritarian structures can be consolidated beneath a surface of electoral competition. The product of the civil and political rights scores is more strongly associated with theoretically relevant correlates of democracy than is their average. Our measure of cultural modernization (see section 3.3) predicts 53 per cent of the variance in the countries' democratic performance in 1995-99 as measured by the product of the Freedom House scores; using the average of these scores, it predicts only 44 per cent. Using the product of the Freedom House scores follows the methodological advice of Zeller and Carmines to operate with the indicator having the better "nomological validity" . 1 9 7 2 -7 3 1 9 7 3 -7 4 1 9 7 4 -7 5 1 9 7 5 -7 6 1 9 7 6 -7 7 1 9 7 7 -7 8 1 9 7 8 -7 9 1 9 7 9 -8 0 1 9 8 0 -8 1 1 9 8 1 -8 2 1 9 8 2 -8 3 1 9 8 3 -8 4 1 9 8 4 -8 5 1 9 8 5 -8 6 1 9 8 6 -8 7 1 9 8 7 -8 8 1 9 8 8 -8 9 1 9 8 9 -9 0 1 9 9 0 -9 1 1 9 9 1 -9 2 1 9 9 2 -9 3 1 9 9 3 -9 4 1 9 9 4 -9 5 1 9 9 5 -9 9 9 6 -9 7 1 9 9 7 -9 8 Average on the Product Freedom House-scale The upper plot in shows that the major wave of regime transitions occurred during the period from 1985 to 1995. Hence, our measure of REGIME change is based on the difference between each country's multiplied Freedom House scores in Since the product of the scores for political rights and civil liberties ranges from 1 to 49, the difference between two products can have values from -48 to +48, with the magnitude indicating the range of change and the sign indicating its direction (negative in case of losses, positive in case of gains in democratic performance). In some cases we calculated this measure using other years than 1985 and 1995, in order to capture individual countries' sustained change rather than short-term shifts that did not endure. Measuring Russia's democratic gains from 1985 to 1995 would be misleading unless we recognize that she lost substantial parts of that gain after 1995: Russia's sustained achievement in democratic performance is better represented by the difference between 1999 and 1985. Conversely, we would underestimate Taiwan's democratic gain if we ignored that her upward move continued to 1997. To identify each country's most significant period of change we inspected plots of the multiplied Freedom House scores for each year since 1980. Using slightly adjusted time frames does not cause methodological problems because we are not attempting to predict the precise time of regime change. We take the occurrence of change as given, and attempt to predict its range. Knowing that a regime change occurred at some time between 1980 and 1999, the question is how far given nations moved towards (or away from) democracy during that period. We do not bother whether certain nations democratized earlier or later. Our concern is the range of nations' durable gains or losses in democracy. All of the changes analyzed here occurred between 1980 and 1999, with the great majority between 1985 and 1995. We identified three entry-types of regimes, based on the levels of democratic performance that were present before change. Countries scoring 9 or lower on the Freedom House product scale were classified as "entry-autocracies." 5 This category includes 34 countries (the timing of change shown in parentheses; if none is indicated, it was 1985-95): Albania (1985-98), Armenia, Azerbaijan (1985-97), , , Bulgaria (1985-96), Chile, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, East Germany, Georgia (1985-97), Ghana (1985-97), Hungary, Latvia, , , Slovenia, South Africa (1985-95), South , , . Countries scoring above 9 and below 25 are classified as "entry-hybrids." Mexico is the only case in this category. Finally, countries scoring 25 or above in 1985 are categorized as "entry-democracies." They include 28 countries: Argentina (1986-95), Australia, Austria, , Canada, Denmark, Dominican Republic (1985-98), Finland, France, West Germany, , UK, USA, Venezuela. Because we need data on cultural modernization, we can not analyze all existing nations. We are restricted to the sample of 61 societies covered by the second and third World Values Surveys. 6 This sample allows one to draw general conclusions because it reflects the global pattern of transitions to democracy, as is demonstrated by the lower plot in : the World Values Survey sample moves on almost exactly the same trajectory as the universe of all nations, although the average democracy score in the WVS sample is consistently larger than in the universe. This reflects a sampling bias: old democracies, which existed before the transition wave, and new democracies, which emerged during this wave, are over-represented. The over-supply of new democracies reflects an over-representation of former communist societies in the sample. But this peculiarity makes the sample even more suited to test modernization theory. Of course, communist regimes broke down partly because of their economic inefficiency-an inefficiency which kept modernization levels lower than they would have been with market economies. But inefficiency did not equalize the levels of economic modernization among communist societies. These societies have shown sizeable long-term differences in levels of industrialization, tertiarization, urbanization, communication, education, and per capita income, ranging from less developed countries, like Romania, to highly developed ones, such as the Czech Republic. One would expect to find similar differences in cultural modernization because cultural modernization is usually linked with economic modernization. Accordingly, Huntington concluded that: "In terms of cultural tradition, economic development and social structure, Czechoslovakia would certainly be a democracy today (and probably Hungary and Poland also) if it were not for the overriding veto of the Soviet presence" . Without the collapse of Soviet imperialism no wave of democratization would have swept across Eastern Europe in 1989. This is evident but does not invalidate modernization theory. The point is the same here as with economic inefficiency. The experience of foreign imperialism, economic inefficiency and authoritarian rule are constants, typical to more or less the same degree for all ex-communist societies. These societies provide an ideal arena in which to test modernization theory, allowing one to study the impact of modernization, holding these factors constant. Former communist societies are by no means the only new democracies in our sample, however. It includes a number of others, such as Chile, the Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, and Taiwan, making it possible to examine the post-communist societies in context with societies of profoundly different historical and cultural background, and to test whether our findings apply to post-communist countries alone. In the modernization literature, the most widely-used indicator of socio-economic development is per capita GDP. Other regularly used indicators include measures of mass communication and mass education as well as the size of the service sector, or "tertiarization." Composite indicators that summarize several aspects of economic modernization are rarely used. This is surprising, since economic modernization is a multifaceted phenomenon, and these facets may interact to bring about democracy. Some societies, such as the oil exporting countries, show exceptionally high figures for per capita GDP but rank low on other aspects, such as mass education. They would show intermediate rankings on a combined modernization indicator-which is more in keeping with their poor democratic performance than their GDP levels would suggest. Similarly, some post communist countries, such as Bulgaria, show anomalously high education levels, suggesting a higher democratic performance than one would expect from per capita GDP. These examples suggest that combined measures of economic modernization may be better predictors of shifts toward democracy than any single measure. Two combined indicators of economic modernization are available: the human development index provided by the United Nations Development Program and an index of resource distribution developed by Vanhanen (see Appendix for data sources and scale construction). There is little consensus on which indicators best measure cultural modernization. Indeed, one reason why neither Muller/Seligson nor Inglehart could prove that cultural modernization promotes transitions to democracy stems from the choice of the cultural variables. Inglehart used generalized trust, life satisfaction, and personal happiness , while Muller and Seligson use these indicators plus a measure of political moderation. No doubt, these are modern civic cultural attitudes. But it is hardly surprising that these attitudes have little to do with transitions to democracy. We do not question that generalized trust, political moderation, and life satisfaction foster the functioning of already existing democracies, as Inglehart argues. 7 But why should high levels of satisfaction, trust, and moderation tend to turn autocracies into democracies? The strengthening of autocracy would be a more plausible consequence. In keeping with modernization theory, we shall consider attitudes linked with economic modernization. These attitudes should be capable of emerging in any type of regime typeotherwise, these attitudes could not emerge within autocracies, causing the emergence of new democracies. Finally, these attitudes should be inherently related to democracy-otherwise there is no reason to expect that an increase in them would give rise to mass demands for democracy. To find the attitudes that satisfy these requirements, one must identify the focal principle of the modernization process as a whole; only then we can seek this principle's equivalent in the sphere of political culture. For this purpose, we propose an interpretation of modernization based on the principle of Human Development. Sen introduced the idea of Human Development, but we will develop this concept more systematically in section 7, introducing it only briefly here . Following Sen, we view Human Development as the enlargement of people's capabilities and opportunities to base their lives on their own choices. Accordingly, the underlying theme of modernization in all its related aspects is individual empowerment. This holds true of economic modernization, which gives people growing physical and cognitive resources through rising incomes, education, and information. Democratization is another aspect of individual empowerment, most obvious in its emphasis on freedom rights. If eco-nomic development and democratization contribute to individual empowerment in the material and institutional spheres of society, what is their equivalent in the cultural sphere? Culture is the domain of mass aspirations, demands, and motivations. Thus, if individual empowerment occurs in the cultural sphere, it would be reflected in a motivational mobilization of the public, leading to more ambitious mass aspirations. We argue that LIBERTY aspirations, or demands for personal freedom for self-and co-determination, represent precisely such ambitious aspirations. Hence, individual empowerment in mass motivations (and thus in political culture) is present in proportion to the spread of liberty aspirations in societies. Rising liberty aspirations represent the aspect of cultural modernization for which we are searching. We hypothesize that: (1) liberty aspirations become more intense and widespread with economic modernization; (2) they do so in both democratic and non-democratic regimes; and (3) they translate into mass demands for democracy, since this is the type of regime that provides the broadest opportunities to satisfy liberty aspirations. 8 (4) Controlling for a society's initial level of democracy, liberty aspirations have a significant positive impact on transitions to democracy whenever external "gate-blockers" are removed. So far no one, not even Inglehart, has examined the impact of liberty aspirations, although this seems perfectly consistent with his general theory of postmaterialist value change. Indeed, three of the six items he uses to measure postmaterialist values focus explicitly on demands for liberties. In keeping with our theoretical framework, we hypothesize that these liberty aspirations should have a stronger impact on transitions toward democracy than any of his other items-indeed, they should have a stronger impact than any other pro-democratic attitude. The postmaterialism battery is organized into three four-item groups, each of which offers the respondents a choice between two materialist and two postmaterialist items. Three of the six postmaterialist items address political or civil liberties: "giving people more say in important government decisions," "protecting freedom of speech," and "seeing that people have more say about how things are done at their jobs and in their communities." Respondents can give each item top, second, or no priority. Depending on how the respondents ranked these items, we scored their liberty aspirations on a six-point index, with 0 indicating the lowest and 5 the highest level of liberty aspirations. When calculating averages across groups, this ordinal index becomes a continuous scale. We use the national means as indicators of given societies' mass levels of liberty aspirations. Liberty aspirations vary within societies, but the responses in each survey show single-peaked distributions that are centered on the median. Thus, national averages reflect the societies' central tendencies in liberty aspirations. Liberty aspirations differ from postmaterialism in both concept and measurement. Postmaterialism combines aspirations for civil and political liberties, together with aspirations for ecological, aesthetic and ethical quality of life. These two types of aspirations can be treated as one concept-postmaterialism-when dealing with cultural change in general. But when focusing on democratization, one should differentiate between liberty aspirations and other aspirations. Giving top priority to the ecological, aesthetic, and ethical quality of life is an aspiration that may emerge in postindustrial societies, while liberty aspirations can evolve considerably earlier. To anticipate one of our findings, the relation between mass levels of liberty aspirations and a nation's democratic performance in 1995-99 shows a .72 Pearson correlation (N = 60). By contrast, the quality of life aspirations show a correlation of only .30 with democratic performance. Thus, the distinction between the two components of postmaterialism is both theoretically and empirically meaningful. In 41 of our 61 societies we measured liberty aspirations using the second World Values Survey conducted in 1990-91. Assuming that transitions to democracy depend on liberty aspirations present during that change, the 1990-91 measure of liberty aspirations is perfectly suitable. This measure is located at the midpoint of the major transition period from 1985 to 1995. In another 20 societies, the measure of liberty aspirations is only available from the third WVS conducted in 1995-98. Using this measure is not ideal but not necessarily problematic. Cross-national differences in liberty aspirations are very stable over short periods of time, such as the approximately five year period between the second and third WVS. In the 30 cases for which both measures are available, the correlation in liberty aspirations between the second and third waves is .90: a given country's liberty aspirations in 1995-97 closely reflect its liberty aspirations in 1990-91. Consequently, we use one pooled measure of liberty aspirations for all 60 nations in our sample. The upper plot in reveals that liberty aspirations do indeed explain much of the variation in transitions toward or away from democracy. In case of "entry-autocracies" liberty aspirations explain 65 per cent of the gains in democratic performance (60% including Belarus and Croatia); 11 while among "entry-democracies," liberty aspirations explain 59 per cent of their resistance against losses of democratic performance (50% including Finland, India and Portugal). Moreover, cross-national differences in liberty aspirations can themselves be explained by variations in economic modernization. This is shown in the lower plot where the x-axis indicates cross-national variation of economic resource distribution (see Appendix for a description of this index). These findings are clearly in line with our hypotheses. Bivariate evidence, however, is insufficient to validate our argument. It is necessary to control for the effects of other variables that have been prominently discussed as correlates of democracy. We will use these variables as control predictors in regression analyses. Alternative predictors, together with our major predictors, are listed in . A detailed description of scale construction is given in the Appendix. We tried to include all predictors to which the literature assigns a significant role in promoting democracy. We refer only briefly to the reasons why these indicators are assumed to be linked with democracy. The predictors can be differentiated into three groups: socio-structural, political cultural and a third group that reflects the international environment. The socio-structural predictors include several indicators of economic modernization: 11 Belarus and Croatia, together with the countries along the chain from Pakistan to the Philippines in (upper plot), show less impact of liberty aspirations on democratic change. These societies' liberty aspirations show larger intra-national variance than most other countries. 12 For more detailed arguments concerning nearly all of these predictors see By contrast, MILITARISM (soldiers per inhabitants, share of military expenditure) has been considered detrimental to democracy. Among the political cultural indicators claimed to be associated with democracy are LIFE satisfaction, tolerance (in terms of ethnicity and sexual orientation), PROTEST behavior, INTERPERSONAL empathy, GENERALIZED trust, INSTITUTIONAL confidence (to political and order institutions), ASSOCIATIONAL activity, SOCIAL bonds, POLITICAL moderation, and POLITICAL interest. These indicators reflect cultural modernization, civic culture, social capital, or the presence of "democratic personalities" in mass cultures . But as we argued, in contrast to liberty aspirations, it is not clear whether these attitudes only sustain already existing democracy, whether they themselves derive from prior experience with democracy, or whether they actually contribute to converting autocracy into democracy. Another predictor, RELIGIOUSNESS, reflects cultural traditionalism rather than cultural modernization. This indicator is therefore assumed to be negatively associated with democracy. The third group of predictors reflects the international environment. Adherents of world system theory argue that a society's position in the global economy determines its chances of being democratic: the more central a country's status in the world economy, the better its chances to sustain democracy . We measure a society's centrality in the world economy (WORLD system position) by its per capita value of exports. Another international variable prominently discussed is diffusion or contagion. Many authors argue that democratization waves occur through regional chain reactions, when a transition in one country triggers similar changes in neighboring countries. We measure CONTAGION by assigning each country the average democratic change in its region. 13 The following tables contain many results worth discussing, but we will focus on our theoretical concern, the impact of economic and cultural modernization-in particular, liberty aspirations. We will discuss only results that are relevant to this. We find that indicators of economic modernization (tertiarization in case of entry-autocracies, economic resource distribution in case of entry-democracies) and our indicator of cultural modernization (liberty aspirations for both entry-groups) are among the most significant and strongest correlates of regime change. The next question is whether these findings hold up in multivariate regressions. Regressing regime change on all of these predictors, raises the problem of many variables and few cases. Consequently, our predictors must surmount several hurdles to be used in the summary models. Our first step was to estimate separate equations for the three types of predictors, calculating partial models for socio-structural, political cultural, and international effects. This produces six partial models, three for entry-autocracies and three for entry-democracies. The partial models are shown in Appendix- . Second, we introduce only those predictors that prove to be significant on the bivariate level (as indicated in ). Ethnic polarization, for example, was not introduced into the sociostructural model for entry-autocracies, but it has been included for entry-democracies. Third, predictors that sharply diminish the number of observations are not used. This applies to income equality, with entry-autocracies, where the data cover only 13 of 34 cases. Fourth, we implement backward deletion in the regression procedure, eliminating the least significant predictor in the first step. Elimination is then repeated until only significant predictors remain. Predictors that surmount these hurdles, qualify for the summary models. The summary models are shown in . When there is no entry for a given predictor, this predictor qualified for the partial model but was eliminated there by the backward deletion procedure. A line indicates that the predictor was introduced into the summary model but was eliminated here by backward deletion. In all models we calculated the variance inflation factor of each predictor (labeled VIF) in order to detect multicollinearity. In none of the models did these factors exceed a value of 5.0. Our results are therefore not contaminated with multicollinearity. 14 In addition, we used the DFFITs statistic to identify outliers and influential cases. Such unusual cases are identified when the DFFITs statistic exceeds a specific value that depends on the number of cases and predictors. 15 Instead of excluding unusual cases, we implemented "bounded influence estimation" using weights for the unusual cases calculated from the DFFITs. In the presence of unusual cases "influence bounding" is necessary to make OLS-results reliable (see . Although our weighted least squares results hardly differ from those of ordinary least squares regression, we report the methodologically preferable results from weighted least squares. Unusual cases and their weights are documented in the tables. The summary models explain less variance in regime change among entry-democracies (69%) than among entry-autocracies (93%). This probably reflects the fact that, in an era of democratic triumph, democracies faced less serious challenges than autocracies. From our theoretical perspective, however, the most important result is that liberty aspirations are the only variable surviving all selection procedures for both entry-autocracies and entrydemocracies. Liberty aspirations emerge as the most significant predictor in both types of 14 Variance inflation factors measure collinearity among predictors. Following a common convention, the values should remain below 5.0. Otherwise, the magnitudes of coefficients are adulterated . The formula for the variance inflation factor is: ). 15 DFFITs indicate for each observation the scaled change in model fit when this observation is deleted. The formula is: ½ * e i where h i is the leverage of the i-th observation and e i is its studentized residual. The cutting point for classifying cases as unusual is: 2 √ (k + 1) / (n -k -1) where "k" is the number of predictors and "n" the number of observations. See societies. And as the partial correlations demonstrate, liberty aspirations explain the largest amount of the variation in regime change. Again this is true for both entry-autocracies and entry-democracies. Controlling for liberty aspirations, the effects of economic modernization (which were significant in the partial models) turn out to be insignificant. Economic modernization seems to be important only in so far as it contributes to rising libertyaspirations. Mass-level liberty aspirations help shape both the transition to democracy in autocracies, and the persistence of democratic institutions in already established democracies. These results contradict Przeworski/Limongi's claim that modernization does not contribute to the emergence of democracy. Similarly, our findings cast serious doubt on both Muller/Seligson's and Inglehart's findings that mass attitudes have no significant impact on shifts toward or away from democracy. Liberty aspirations seem to have been crucial in the Third Wave of democratization. We hypothesized that economic modernization is conducive to rising liberty aspirations, regardless of whether a society has experienced democracy or autocracy. This assumption is crucial in determining whether liberty aspirations lead to democracy, or vice versa. In order to prove that liberty aspirations are causally prior to democracy, we must demonstrate that liberty aspirations are not determined by a society's prior experience with democracy, once we control for economic modernization. We test this assumption by regressing liberty aspirations on various indicators of prior democratic performance and economic modernization. In addition, we include Western cultural heritage as a control predictor. Thus, the regression comprises three different possible sources of liberty aspirations: economic development, regime experience, and cultural tradition. The result in is unequivocally clear: controlling for economic modernization, prior experience with democracy has no significant impact on liberty aspirations; while economic modernization has a powerful impact, even controlling for democracy and Western cultural heritage. Our findings leave little room for an alternative causal interpretation. Several reasons invalidate the counter-argument that liberty aspirations are simply the result of democracy. We have just demonstrated that prior experience with democracy does not have a significant effect on liberty aspirations. Liberty aspirations depend primarily on long-term differences in economic development. Furthermore, the available evidence indicates that liberty aspirations are themselves relatively persistent over time, growing gradually with economic development. Persistence alone argues against reverse causation: the sudden regime changes that took place between 1985 and 1995 can not have created differences in liberty aspirations that persist over time and were present already earlier. Our findings point to a prevailing (though not necessarily exclusive) causal flow from economic development to rising liberty aspirations to democratization. Statistical evidence of a dominant causal flow does not, by itself, provide theoretical reasons for it. The search for such reasons leads back to the logic of the modernization process. Various authors have proposed reasons why economic development and democracy are related, or why democracy and civic values, or why civic values and economic development, are related. But these reasons are discussed in isolation for each bivariate relation. Even the most encompassing studies dissolve the triangular nexus into bivariate relations, which are discussed independently of each other. Since a theory must be more general than the relation it tries to explain, there is no coherent theory of the modernization-democratization nexus. One of the most central facts of cross-national research still lacks a comprehensive interpretation: the fact that economic development, civic culture (in particular liberty aspirations), and democracy represent one common syndrome of societal reality. This can be demonstrated by various kinds of factor analyses. Regardless of whether we use all indicators available for more than 50 cases, or only those that proved significant in the summary models, the result is the same (see ): economic development, liberty aspirations, and democracy all load on the first principal component and they show the strongest loadings on it. They form a robust and distinct dimension in different variants of exploratory factor analysis. What underlying dimension do these variables reflect? One may easily answer, "modernization." But then we need to give that term a substantive meaning-a meaning that specifies each variable's relationship to this underlying principle. What is the common denominator of economic development, liberty aspirations, and democracy? We suggest that these variables work together in enhancing individual empowerment. Economic development leads to individual empowerment by making more resources available; liberty aspirations reflect motivational empowerment, giving rise to growing mass demands for self-determination; and democracy brings institutional empowerment by guaranteeing political rights and civil liberties. These variables converge in the principle of individual empowerment (see ). We characterize this principle as Human Development because increasing individual empowerment contributes to developing a society's inherent human potential. A growing proportion of the people have larger capabilities, stronger motivations and wider opportunities to make use of their human talents and predilections. Human Development does not necessarily proceed in linear fashion. Instead, the three elements of Human Development tend to coincide in either regressing or progressing, with societies scoring low or high in one of these elements tending to score low or high in the other elements as well. Entries are factor loadings from principal components analysis with varimax rotation. Loadings below .10 suppressed. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure: .62. N = 56. With this concept of the focal principle in the modernization-nexus, we can revisit the causal problem from a more general perspective. The decisive question is whether the logic of individual empowerment points to any causal priority in the emergence of its elements. In the promotion of individual empowerment, economic development contributes capabilities, liberty aspirations give rise to demands, and democracy provides opportunities (maintained by freedom rights). Thus, logic suggests two causal priorities: capabilities give rise to demands, and demands give rise to opportunities. The first priority is logical because capabilities set the margin for demands that can be effectively pursued. It is irrational for people to evolve aspirations for goals that are clearly beyond their capabilities. Numerous studies, in widely varying countries, have found that people with relatively limited economic and cognitive capabilities place less emphasis on political participation. 17 People are less likely to aspire to things that are out of reach. Con-versely, more ambitious demands, such as those connected with postmaterialism, are most pronounced among people with greater economic and cognitive capabilities. Similarly, liberty aspirations tend to be more widespread among people with greater capabilities. As economic development increases people's capabilities, it gives rise to higher aspirations. Consequently, mass publics in countries with higher levels of economic development show stronger liberty aspirations. This corresponds to the logic of individual empowerment: capabilities set the parameters for effective demands. The second priority, that of demands over opportunities, is also logical, since demands set the parameters for pressure on given opportunities. In democratic transitions, liberty aspirations work as the demand-function (demands for freedom rights), whereas democracy itself serves as the supply-function (supply of freedom rights). If demands are primarily nourished by capabilities, an inadequate level of democracy will not prevent rising demands for democracy. For instance, Czechoslovakia had for many decades much lower levels of democracy than India, but it nevertheless developed substantially stronger liberty aspirations-in accordance with its higher level of economic development. This relation is not deterministic. But in so far as there is an empirical connection between liberty aspirations and democratization, it is more plausible to ascribe causal primacy to liberty aspirations: demands for freedom set the parameters for opportunities for freedom. The logic of individual empowerment implies a causal priority of capabilities over demands and a priority of demands over opportunities. These priorities reflect a prevailing (though not exclusive) causal flow from economic development to liberty aspirations to democracy. Positive feed back loops in the reverse direction may well exist, creating a selfreinforcing cycle of Human Development. But the logic of individual empowerment as well as the statistical evidence indicate that the main effects follow the Human Development sequence. Our analysis is based on the largest sample of societies ever used to analyze the impact of cultural modernization on democratization. This analysis also used, for the first time, a change variable based on each nation's particular timing in its shift toward, or away from, democracy over the last 20 years. We focused on a major manifestation of cultural modernization: mass-level liberty aspirations, a variable previously ignored in empirical studies of regime transitions. Our attention was drawn to the role of liberty aspirations by the concept of Human Development, which moves beyond standard modernization theory. Usually, theoretical concepts cannot maximize comprehensiveness and specificness at the same time. But the concept of Human Development does. On one hand, Human Development is a comprehensive concept that integrates changes in three distinct spheres of society: socio-economic structures, political culture, and regime institutions. On the other hand, the concept is specific because it integrates the changes in these spheres into one theme: individual empowerment. Finally and foremost, the principle of individual empowerment entails a more general logic that implies causal priorities in the emergence of economic development, liberty aspirations, and democracy (one that is supported by statistical evidence). Our analysis is unusual in that we relate change-rates in one variable to level-differences in another. Doing so, we demonstrated a statistical relation between a variable that is relatively stable (cultural modernization) and another variable that can change suddenly (democracy). Logically, there is only one causal interpretation for this type of relation. Sudden changes cannot cause long-term level-differences that already existed earlier. Level-differences, however, can produce varying change-rates if a third effect (such as a shift in international regime support) removes a "gate-blocker" that prevented level-differences from bringing corresponding changes. In this way, one can explain rates of regime change from levels of modernization. We did not analyze when democratic transitions occur. We took the occurrence of democratic transitions as a given and attempted to pre-dict their range. Any explanation of the occurrence of transition waves must take international regime support into account. But once transitions occur, any explanation of their ranges should recognize modernization factors, especially liberty aspirations. We did not analyze the mechanisms how mass-level liberty aspirations translate into groupings and actions that bring about regime change. But such mechanisms must exist. Otherwise mass-level liberty aspirations would have no significant effect on subsequent regime changes. Actually, this effect is profound and can not be simply ruled out. This shifts the burden of proof to those who believe that regime changes are unaffected by prevailing mass preferences and simply a matter of voluntary elite action. We lack sufficient longitudinal data to provide a final proof, but available statistical evidence, plus theoretical reasons, point to a primary causal flow from liberty aspirations to democracy. This finding contradicts the claim that mass attitudes are insignificant for the emergence of modern democracies. Many scholars have been trying to identify the mass attitudes that are most conducive to democracy, but none of them explicitly pointed to liberty aspirations. Adherents of the actors-approach accept that the consolidation of democracy is somehow linked with development, but they still believe that change toward democracy depends on voluntary elite action. The fact that mass liberty aspirations explains 65 to 93 per cent of the variance in our model, indicates that elites are only part of the story. The residual in our models probably reflects the leeway that collective actors have in steering democratic change; but this residual is relatively small, though not negligible. Hence, the leverage of collective actors seems to involve mainly when and how they can bring democratic change, rather than how far it will go. were counted as democratic when a country scored on at least 8 points on the 10-point democracy scale of Gurr and Jaggers, "Polity III" data . Contagion: each country scores at the average regime change of its region from 1985 to 1995. Regional averages were calculated for all countries scored by Freedom House. Regions defined due to Inglehart's concept of "cultural zones" . World system position: logged US-$ of exports per capita 1994, Human Development Report 1998. The following variables are taken from the second and third World Values Surveys. Life satisfaction: national average on a 10-point rating scale for life satisfaction (v96). *Human tolerance: sexuality: "not mentioned" for "disliked neighbors" selected and dichotomized as 1 against 0; scores added for neighbors with AIDS (v58) and homosexual neighbors (v60); aggregate measure is a national average on a 0-2 scale. *Human tolerance: ethnicity: scores added for neighbors of different nationality (v52), different religion (v57) and immigrants (v58). *Protest behavior: "already done" for "participation" dichotomized; scores for petition (v118), boycott (v119), and demonstration (v120) added; aggregate measure is an average on a 0-3 scale. Interpersonal empathy: percentage of people opting for "understand others' preferences" when asked what is "important for human relations" (v48). Generalized trust: percentage of respondents believing "most people can be trusted" (v27). Social bonds: "very important" dichotomized for "importance of family" (v4) and "importance of friends" (v5); scores added to a 0-2 scale. *Institutional confidence: order: "very" and "quite" confident dichotomized; scores for church (v135), army (v136), police (v141) and legal system (v137) added to a 0-4 scale. *Institutional confidence: politics: scores for parliament (v144), government (v142), parties (v143), and civil service (v145) added to 0-4 scale. Political moderation: percentage of respondents opting for "gradual reforms" when asked for their preferred mode of societal change (v124). Political interest: percentage of respondents who report to "discuss politics" "frequently" with friends (v37). *Associational activity: "active membership" dichotomized; scores added for religious associations (v28), education, arts and music associations (v30), environmental associations (v33), and charitable associations (v35). Religiousness: "importance of god in one's life," national average on a 10-point scale (1: not at all important, 10:very important). *Items that are summarized in additive indices form a distinct principal component in exploratory factor analyses of the related item batteries, using the pooled individual data. The Civic Culture Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies Determinants of Economic Growth World System Position, Dependency and Democracy American Sociological Review Political Democracy and the Size Distribution of Income American Sociological Review New Class and Cumulative Trend Explanations of the Liberal Political Attitudes of Professionals American Journal of Sociology Comparative Democracy American Political Science Review National Political Development American Sociological Review Democracy and Its Critics Citizen Politics Economic Development and Democracy Reconsidered The Globalization of Democracy Global Transformation and the Third World Estimation with Cross-National Data. Robust and Nonparametric Methods American Sociological Review Reassessing the Three Waves of Democratization World Politics A Culturalist Theory of Political Change American Political Science Review Gradations of Democracy? Empirical Tests of Alternative Conceptualizations American Journal of Political Science Citizens and the State Citizens and the State The Structural Determinants of Democratic Consolidation Comparative Political Studies Empirical Linkages Between Democracy and Economic Growth British Journal of Political Science The Impact of Economic Development on Democracy Journal of Economic Perspectives Will More Countries Become Democratic? Political Science Quarterly Modernization and Postmodernization Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values American Sociological Review Exploring Individual Modernity Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries Tracking Democracy's Third Wave with the Polity III Data Journal of Peace Research Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Econometrics Waves of Democratization Studies in Comparative International Development Some Social Requisites of Democracy American Political Science Review A Comparative Analysis of the Social Requisites of Democracy International Social Science Journal Democratization in Long Perspective Technological Forecasting and Social Change Basic Needs and Growth-Welfare Trade-Offs International Studies Quarterly Civic Culture and Democracy American Political Science Review Multivariate Analysis of National Political Development American Sociological Review Modernization: Theories and Facts World Politics Making Democracy Work Political Change and Underdevelopment Promoting Polyarchy Materialist-Postmaterialist Value Orientations The Impact of Values Human Capital and Human Capability World Development Regime Change and the Restructuring of Alliances American Journal of Political Science Prospects of Democracy Regression Sensitivity Analysis and Bounded-Influence Estimation Evaluation of Econometric Models Measurement in the Social Sciences Income equality: poorest to richest ratio: ratio of poorest to richest quintile, same source. Ethnic polarity: percentage of the second largest ethnic group around the mid 1980s, from 1990 and 1993 Britannica Book of the Year. Linguistic fractionalization: Rae-index of fractionalization calculated from the number and proportion of language groups, Britannica Book of the Year 1998. Protestantism: percentage protestants ca. mid 1980s, same source as for ethnic polarity. Western Cultural heritage: percentage Protestants plus Catholics ca. mid 1980s, same source. Islamism: percentage Muslims ca. mid 1980s, same source. Religious fractionalization: Rae-index of fractionalization calculated from the number and proportion of religious groups, Britannica Book of the Year 1998. State capacity: tax revenue: share of the state's tax revenue in GDP as of 1989-90 The following sections describe our variables and data sources. Prosperity: logged per capita GDP in US-Dollar at market exchange rates in 1990, United Nations Statistical Yearbook Contexts of Political Protest in Western Democracies: Political Organization and Modernity. Edeltraud Roller und Bernhard Wessels FS III Lokale Demokratie in Deutschland fünf Jahre nach der Vereinigung. Thomas R. Cusack und Bernhard Weßels FS III Social Alliances and Coalitions: The Organizational Underpinnings of Democracy in West Germany Bernhard Wessels FS III Abbau des Sozialstaats. Einstellungen der Bundesbürger zu Kürzungen von Sozialleistungen in den neunziger Jahren. Edeltraud Roller FS III System Characteristics Matter: Empirical Evidence from Ten Representation Studies. Bernhard Wessels FS III Wohin geht der Wandel der demokratischen Institutionen in Deutschland? Die Entwicklung der Demokratievorstellungen der Deutschen seit ihrer Vereinigung. Dieter Fuchs FS III Legislative Recruitment in Germany: Professionalization or Political Class? Bernhard Wessels FS III Social Capital, Institutional Structures, and Democratic Performance: A Comparative Study of German Local Governments Cusack FS III 97-202 The Electoral Process in the Unified Germany Robert Rohrschneider FS III Kriterien demokratischer Performanz in Liberalen Demokratien Dieter Fuchs FS III Vom Konsens zum Dissens? Politische Ordnungspräferenzen von Eliten und Bürgern im ost-westdeutschen Vergleich. Christian Welzel FS III Mapping Political Support in the 1990s: A Global Analysis Economic Conditions, and Democratic Performance in Transitional Regimes. Hans-Dieter Klingemann und Richard I. Hofferbert FS III 98-204 The Political Culture of Unified Germany FS III 98-203 Remembering the Bad Old Days: Human Rights Näherung oder Richtung? Der Theorienstreit der Wahlforschung aus der Sicht politischer Repräsentation. Christian Welzel und Thomas R. Cusack FS III Analyzing Democratic Change and Stability: A Human Development Theory of Democracy Christian Welzel und Ronald Inglehart FS III Soziale Integration und politische Institutionen in modernen Gesellschaften. Dieter Fuchs FS III 99-204 Die demokratische Gemeinschaft in den USA und in Deutschland Political Consequences of Germany's Mixed-Member System: Personalization at the Grass-Roots? Hans-Dieter Klingemann und Bernhard Wessels FS III 00-201 Structures of diversity of press and broadcasting systems: The institutional context of public communication in Western democracies Ideology-Driven Public Opinion Formation in Europe: The Case of Third Sector Attitudes in Sweden Staffan Kumlin FS III Ostdeutschland: Zwischen Eigensinn und Paternalismus. Wolfgang Schroeder FS III Ministerial Bureaucracies as Stand-In Agenda Setters? A Comparative Description. Kai-Uwe Schnapp Typen und Indizes demokratischer Regime Eine Analyse des Präsidentialismus-und des Veto-Spieler-Ansatzes Dieter Fuchs FS III 00-206 Eastward Enlargement of the European Union and the Identity of Europe FS III 00-207 Democracy and Its Discontents in Post-Wall Germany Human Development as a General Theory of Social Change: A Multi-Level and Cross-Cultural Perspective Human Development and the "Explosion" of Democracy: Variations of Regime Change across 60 Societies Human Development and the "Explosion" of Democracy: Variations of Regime Change across 60 Societies Christian Welzel Ronald Inglehart Human Development and the "Explosion" of Democracy: Variations of Regime Change across 60 Societies GROBID - A machine learning software for extracting information from scholarly documents Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB). Zusammenfassung Jüngere Forschungsarbeiten haben eine globale "Explosion" der Demokratie identifiziert, die eine scharf eingegrenzte Periode innerhalb Huntingtons breiterer Definition der Dritten Demokratisierungswelle bildet. Mit Blick auf diese hervorstechende Demokratisierungsphase ist die Rolle von Modernisierungsfaktoren bisher noch nicht untersucht worden. Ausgehend davon, dass Modernisierung ökonomische und kulturelle Aspekte hat, prüfen wir zwei prominente Thesen. Zunächst testen wir Przeworski/Limongis Behauptung, dass Regimewechsel zur Demokratie nicht von ökonomischer Modernisierung befördert werden. Unter Verwendung eines kontinuierlichen Maßes für Regimewechsel kommen wir zu einem gegenteiligen Ergebnis. Zum zweiten testen wir Ingleharts Befund, dass moderne Einstellungen der Bürger ebenfalls keine positive Wirkung auf Regimewechsel zur Demokratie hätten. Im Gegensatz auch zu diesem Befund kommen wir zu dem Ergebnis, dass ein wesentlicher Aspekt kultureller Modernisierung, nämlich die Verbreitung von Freiheitsansprüchen, sehr wohl einen positiven Effekt auf Regimewechsel zur Demokratie hat-mehr noch sogar als ökonomische Modernisierung. Zum dritten entfalten wir das Konzept der Humanentwicklung, um ein generelleres Verständnis der Wirkungszusammenhänge im Modernisierungs-Demokratisierungs-Nexus zu etablieren. Unsere Daten decken 60 Gesellschaften aus den Weltwertestudien ab, auf die fast 50 Prozent aller Regimewechsel entfallen, die seit 1972 weltweit aufgetreten sind. Introduction In recent articles Kurzman and Dorenspleet have shown that Huntington's original periodization of the "Third Wave" of democratization needs to be corrected (Kurzman 1998; Doorenspleet 2000; Huntington 1991: 21-26) . Although Huntington dates the beginning of the Third Wave to the mid 1970s, neither Kurzman nor Doorenspleet find evidence of an unusual increase in the proportion of the world's democracies before the late 1980s. Instead, a sharply distinctive "explosion of democratization" occurred within a narrow time span from the late 1980s to the early 1990s (Doorenspleet 2000: 399) : more than 70 per cent of the shifts toward democracy that Huntington calls "The Third Wave" occurred in this much shorter period. So far, the role of modernization has not been analyzed with particular regard to this distinctive phase of democratization. Among recent studies of the modernization-democratization linkage only few authors explicitly analyze changes to democracy instead of levels of democracy (Muller and Seligson 1994; Inglehart 1997: 160-215; Przeworski and Limongi 1997) . As we will demonstrate, even these few authors operate with an inappropriate time frame, so that the most significant regime changes between 1985 and 1995 slip through their net. Thus, the claims of modernization theory have not been examined for their most outstanding test case. It is still an open question whether modernization theory does apply to the global "explosion of democracy." To give an answer to this question is the purpose of this article. Modernization refers to naturally evolving processes in economic structure and political culture. Typically, these processes are continuous, incremental, and path dependent, producing persistent developmental differences between nations (Inglehart and Baker 2000) . Democratization, on the other hand, is a process that occurs rapidly, in distinct waves that sweep across many nations (Huntington 1991: 13-30; Modelski and Perry 1991; Jaggers and Gurr 1995; Kurzman 1998; Doorenspleet 2000) . While it takes decades for nations to move from low to high levels of modernization, they can leap literally overnight from autocracy to democracy. Abruptness is one profound characteristic of democratization waves. Another one is that they follow major changes on the international scene, especially shifts of regime alliances (Siverson and Starr 1994) . Abruptness and shifting regime alliances limit the extent to which modernization can explain transitions to democracy. Modernization is an endogenous and long-term characteristic of societies which can not explain the suddenness and the internationality of democratization waves. Modernization as such does not create the situations that favor international waves of democratization. Historically, these situations resulted from shifts of regime alliances when autocratic empires, such as those of Germany and Japan, were defeated and dissolved in Word War II. The recent "explosion of democracy," too, was preceded by a shift of regime alliances. In the 1970s western powers still supported many autocratic regimes, such as that of Marcos in the Philippines or Noriega in Panama. Not until the early 1980s did this policy began to change. The US and the EU provided financial support for democratic movements in authoritarian states, and the World Bank began to tie credits to conditions of "good governance" (Robinson 1991; Randall and Theobald 1998: 242-244) . Western-oriented autocracies lost international support from the mid 1980s onwards. Communist autocracies suffered from a similar loss, though this happened in a much more incisive way when Gorbachev nullified the Brezhnev doctrine in 1987. These changes in both East and West reduced international support for autocracies, helping trigger the global "explosion of democracy" from 1985 to 1995. Yet, shifts of regime alliances are only part of the explanation. The end of the Brezhnev doctrine helps explain why communism broke suddenly down in societies that have once been under Soviet control. But the end of the Brezhnev doctrine does not account for the huge variations in changes to democracy, ranging from the small improvements in Belarus to the large ones in Poland. The international factor does not make modernization irrelevant. Instead, the international setting opens windows of opportunity through which modernization can operate. Modernization can be blocked from having an impact on political regimes by external support of autocracy. But once that support is withdrawn, the gate is open. Then, cross-national differences in modernization-which seemed to be irrelevant for decades-may suddenly become consequential in creating corresponding variations in changes to democracy. This poses the question: "To what extent do persistent variations in modernization levels explain sudden variations of regime changes?" This is what modernization could explain. Whether it does will be analyzed in this article. We begin with a discussion why recent findings about the role of modernization in transitions to democracy are inconclusive. On the basis of this critique we unfold an argument why mass-level liberty aspirations, as an indicator cultural modernization, are the most powerful predictor of transitions to democracy. This claim is tested in subsequent sections, controlling for numerous factors which are considered as important in the democratization literature. The effect remains robust against all kinds of control. We then demonstrate that liberty aspirations do not depend on prior democratic experience. This invalidates the counter-argument of a reverse causation between liberty aspirations and democracy. Liberty aspirations do not simply reflect experience with democracy; they derive primarily from economic modernization. Finally, we discuss our findings within the broader theoretical framework of Human Development. This leads to a more general understanding of the causal mechanisms in the modernization-democratization linkage. Recent Findings on the Modernization-Democratization Linkage Research on the relation between modernization and democratization has a long tradition. 1 Most studies in this field define modernization as economic development, using various indicators linked with economic growth, rising education and communication and increasing social diversification. Many analyses have shown a robust positive relation between economic development and levels of democracy. Following the Marxian notion that regime institutions reflect socioeconomic structures, the prevailing causal interpretation of these correlations is that democracy results from economic development rather than the reverse (Helliwell 1994; Burkhart and Lewis-Beck 1994; Barro 1997: 63-87) . Few empirical studies, however, deal explicitly with transitions to democracy. Most studies analyze levels of democracy at a given time or the number of years under democratic rule, leaving it uncertain whether modernization only sustains existing democracies, or whether modernization also promotes the rise of new democracies. Recognizing this question, Przeworski and Limongi (1997) make an important contribution by explicitly analyzing the emergence of democracies (and autocracies, respectively). They use a dichotomous regime measure to estimate the probability that a regime switches from autocracy to democracy, or the reverse. They conclude that modernization helps account for the survival of existing democracies, but not the emergence of democracies from autocracies. Though this finding has attained wide prominence, it is dubious in several respects. First and foremost, it seems to rest on a misinterpretation of Przeworski/Limongi's own data. The authors draw their conclusion from the finding that, in the period since 1950, the probability of autocracies shifting to democracy does not increase with higher levels of eco-nomic development. But this is only half of the story. The first column of their Table 2 shows that the probability of shifts in the opposite does also not increase with rising income levels. Instead, the probability of democracies to switch to autocracy decreases steeply when income levels grow (Przeworski and Limongi 1997: 162) . Thus, the crucial question concerns the probability balance of switches to democracy and autocracy: how large is the probability of switches to democracy compared with switches to autocracy as income levels rise? One can easily calculate from Przeworski/Limongi's figures that this ratio changes monotonically in favor of switches to democracy with rising income levels: in very poor countries (below $1,000), autocracies are only one tenth as likely to switch to democracy as democracies to autocracy; while in very rich countries (above $7,000) autocracies are 28 times likelier to switch to democracy than democracies to autocracy. This is demonstrated by the following ratios, calculated from Przeworski and Limongi's table: Per capita income Probability of autocracies switching to democracy a divided by probability of democracies switching to autocracy b Below $1,000 0.10 $1,001-2,000 0.24 $2,001-3,000 0.64 $3,001-4,000 1.50 $4,001-5,000 3.13 $5,001-6,000 6.25 $6,001-7,000 11.75 Over $7,000 28.33 a P AD in Table 2 of Przeworski and Limongi 1997: 162 . b P DA op. cit. There is growing preponderance of transitions to democracy over the opposite with rising income levels. Przeworski/Limongi's conclusion that transitions to democracy occur randomly is obviously flawed, even in view of their own data. A second problem in Przeworski and Limongi's analysis is that they use a dichotomous measure of democracy. They assume that democracy reflects some minimal criterion, such as holding free elections: with it, democracy is present; without it, there is autocracy. But this is an over simplification, since most contemporary regimes fall into a gray area between maximum democracy and autocracy. A society's location on this continuum cannot be captured by a dichotomous measure. Even among regimes that would count as democracies by some minimal criteria, there are substantial differences in important aspects, such as freedom of the press, fairness of elections and the extent of human rights. Though a democracy by some minimal criteria, India does not perform as well as Japan in these aspects. Conversely, regimes that might be labeled autocracies because they do not hold free elections, show substantial differences in their repressiveness. Even during the PRI hegemony, Mexico was not as repressive as China is today. Such differences can only be captured by graded measures of democratic performance. Przeworski and Limongi's methodological argument for using a dichotomous measure is similarly unconvincing. They argue that dichotomous measures have a smaller error variance than graded measures. This is true but the crucial question is how large the error variance is in relation to the total variance. Graded measures show a larger error variance but a larger total variance as well, so the ratio between these variances is not necessarily worse in graded measures. Quite the contrary, Elkins' analysis indicates that graded measures tend to have a better "nomological validity" (Elkins 2000) . Third, Przeworski and Limongi completely neglect the cultural dimension of modernization. This is a serious shortcoming in their account of modernization. From Lipset onward, it has been argued that economic modernization has a positive impact on democracy because it leads to changes in mass attitudes that undermine autocracy and foster democracy (Lipset 1959) . Often described as "civic culture" (Almond and Verba 1963) or "cultural modernity" (Inkeles 1983) , modern attitudes include tolerance, generalized trust, ideological moderation, subjective well-being, and an emphasis on individual self-expression (Inglehart and Baker 2000) . Cultural modernization seems to be the intervening variable between economic modernization and democracy (Huntington 1991: 69) . Logically this should be true. Democratization is a product of collective action, and collective action is guided by collective preferences that are embedded in political cultures (Eckstein 1988 ). The impact of economic modernization on democratization, therefore, should operate through its impact on cultural modernization. Surprisingly at first glance, empirical evidence supporting this thesis is scarce. Analyzing 24 societies from the first World Values Survey, Muller and Seligson found little evidence that modern mass attitudes promoted shifts toward democracy from 1972-80 to 1981-90 (Muller and Seligson 1994) . Similarly, Inglehart's analyses of 43 societies from the second World Values Survey found that subjective well-being and interpersonal trust were conducive to high levels of democracy, but had no significant effect on changes toward democracy from 1990 to 1995 (Inglehart 1997: 181, Table 6 .1). These findings seem to contradict modernization theory. We will demonstrate, however, that these findings are inconclusive because of misspecifications of the dependent and independent variables. The Dependent Variable: Democratization Both Muller/Seligson and Inglehart use the sum of the civil liberties and political rights scores from Freedom House as a measure for the level of democracy over a given period. Regime change is then operationalized by comparing the levels at two different periods. The first problem with both analyses is based on the timing of the change measure. Muller and Seligson attempt to analyze change in democracy levels by regressing democracy levels averaged over 1981-1990 on the average democracy levels in 1972-1980. But the difference in democracy levels between these periods represents the historic course of democratic transitions inadequately. The vast majority of the world's new democracies experienced the most significant regime changes in the period between 1985 and 1995. Muller/Seligson's analysis, however, groups the first half of the transition period together with another period during which most of the new democracies were autocratic, averaging out the most significant changes. Even worse, Muller/Seligson's analysis completely skips the second half of the transition period . Consider Chile's Freedom House scores: the most salient feature of recent Chilean history is the rapid rise in democratic performance from an extremely low level in 1987 to a very high level in 1990. How is this represented in Muller/Seligson's measure? Comparing Chile's democracy level during 1972-80 with that in 1981-90 reveals little change. The rise in democratic performance from 1987-90 is averaged with the poor performance of the late Pinochet-period; while the early Pinochet-period is offset by the much better democratic performance before Allende's death. Mixed together this way, some of the most crucial regime changes in the late twentieth century are buried. The choice of time periods is crucial, and should take the important Third Wave into account; Muller and Seligson's choice of periods seems completely arbitrary. Inglehart avoids averaging democracy scores over long periods of time. He creates a change variable by calculating the difference in democracy levels between 1995 and 1990. This time frame, also, ignores the first half of the major transition period . The dramatic changes in the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Chile are obscured by this measure. Moreover, Inglehart's analysis does not control for the different levels of democracy at which given societies enter the period of change. This is a serious problem, since a society's entry-level of democracy limits the possible range of change toward more democracy. Societies that are already close to the maximum on democratic performance, have no chance of substantial improvement. Even if the presence of a modernized culture were the sole cause of democratization, it would be perfectly possible to find a negative correlation between cultural modernization and rising levels of democracy: the societies with the most modernized cultures would show the smallest change toward democracy-since they adopted high levels of democracy already earlier. To conclude that cultural modernization is detrimental to democratization would be a serious misinterpretation in this case. Another methodological problem is that most authors who use the Freedom House scores for civil liberties and political rights simply add them up, producing an average of the two measures. It is more effective, however, to use the product of these scores, rather than the sum. This is true because many countries have shown substantially more improvement in their scores on political rights, than in their scores on civil liberties. The proportion of the world's countries with the highest scores (6 or 7) on the political rights scale increased from 24 to 46 per cent between 1972 and 1998, while the corresponding group in the civil liberties scale increased only from 23 to 33 per cent. 2 This phenomenon is apparent in the upper plot in Figure 1 . This figure shows the number of countries that moved at least two points upwards on the Freedom House scales, minus the number that moved downwards, for each year since 1972. The results are shown separately for political rights and civil liberties. Scores above zero indicate how many more countries moved upwards than downwards. As is evident, the trends for political rights and civil liberties do not necessarily coincide. Especially in the major transition phase, the gains for civil liberties are substantially lower than those for political rights. If civil liberties and political rights interact to produce democracy, one should not allow high scores on one to compensate for low scores on the other. We avoid this by using their products. Doing otherwise, obscures the difference between merely "electoral" and genuine "liberal" democracies (Diamond 1993) . Some dubious democracies, such as Peru under Fujimori, show an embellished performance when we use the average instead of the product score: These countries perform fairly well on political rights but not on civil liberties. Averaging these discrepancies out, ignores the fact that limitations on civil liberties may render political rights ineffective. In this way, authoritarian structures can be consolidated beneath a surface of electoral competition. The product of the civil and political rights scores is more strongly associated with theoretically relevant correlates of democracy than is their average. Our measure of cultural modernization (see section 3.3) predicts 53 per cent of the variance in the countries' democratic performance in 1995-99 as measured by the product of the Freedom House scores; using the average of these scores, it predicts only 44 per cent. Using the product of the Freedom House scores follows the methodological advice of Zeller and Carmines to operate with the indicator having the better "nomological validity" (Zeller and Carmines 1980) . 1 9 7 2 -7 3 1 9 7 3 -7 4 1 9 7 4 -7 5 1 9 7 5 -7 6 1 9 7 6 -7 7 1 9 7 7 -7 8 1 9 7 8 -7 9 1 9 7 9 -8 0 1 9 8 0 -8 1 1 9 8 1 -8 2 1 9 8 2 -8 3 1 9 8 3 -8 4 1 9 8 4 -8 5 1 9 8 5 -8 6 1 9 8 6 -8 7 1 9 8 7 -8 8 1 9 8 8 -8 9 1 9 8 9 -9 0 1 9 9 0 -9 1 1 9 9 1 -9 2 1 9 9 2 -9 3 1 9 9 3 -9 4 1 9 9 4 -9 5 1 9 9 5 -9 9 9 6 -9 7 1 9 9 7 -9 8 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1998 Average on the Product Freedom House-scale The upper plot in Figure 1 shows that the major wave of regime transitions occurred during the period from 1985 to 1995. Hence, our measure of REGIME change is based on the difference between each country's multiplied Freedom House scores in 1995 and 1985. 3 Since the product of the scores for political rights and civil liberties ranges from 1 to 49, the difference between two products can have values from -48 to +48, with the magnitude indicating the range of change and the sign indicating its direction (negative in case of losses, positive in case of gains in democratic performance). In some cases we calculated this measure using other years than 1985 and 1995, in order to capture individual countries' sustained change rather than short-term shifts that did not endure. Measuring Russia's democratic gains from 1985 to 1995 would be misleading unless we recognize that she lost substantial parts of that gain after 1995: Russia's sustained achievement in democratic performance is better represented by the difference between 1999 and 1985. Conversely, we would underestimate Taiwan's democratic gain if we ignored that her upward move continued to 1997. To identify each country's most significant period of change we inspected plots of the multiplied Freedom House scores for each year since 1980. 4 Using slightly adjusted time frames does not cause methodological problems because we are not attempting to predict the precise time of regime change. We take the occurrence of change as given, and attempt to predict its range. Knowing that a regime change occurred at some time between 1980 and 1999, the question is how far given nations moved towards (or away from) democracy during that period. We do not bother whether certain nations democratized earlier or later. Our concern is the range of nations' durable gains or losses in democracy. All of the changes analyzed here occurred between 1980 and 1999, with the great majority between 1985 and 1995. Number of Positive minus Negative Changes We identified three entry-types of regimes, based on the levels of democratic performance that were present before change. Countries scoring 9 or lower on the Freedom House product scale were classified as "entry-autocracies." 5 This category includes 34 countries (the timing of change shown in parentheses; if none is indicated, it was 1985-95): Albania (1985-98), Armenia, Azerbaijan (1985-97), Bangladesh, Belarus (1985-96) , Bosnia-Herzegovina (1985-96) , Bulgaria (1985-96), Chile, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, East Germany, Georgia (1985-97), Ghana (1985-97), Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia (1985 -98), Moldova (1985 -98), Nigeria (1985 -99), Pakistan (1984 , Philippines (1983 -96), Poland, Romania, Russia (1985 -99), Slovakia (1985 , Slovenia, South Africa (1985-95), South Korea, Taiwan (1985-96) , Ukraine, Uruguay (1980-95) , Yugoslavia (1985-99) . Countries scoring above 9 and below 25 are classified as "entry-hybrids." Mexico is the only case in this category. Finally, countries scoring 25 or above in 1985 are categorized as "entry-democracies." They include 28 countries: Argentina (1986-95), Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil (1986-97) , Canada, Denmark, Dominican Republic (1985-98), Finland, France, West Germany, Iceland, India (1980 -95), Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru (1988 -97), Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey (1987 , UK, USA, Venezuela. Because we need data on cultural modernization, we can not analyze all existing nations. We are restricted to the sample of 61 societies covered by the second and third World Values Surveys. 6 This sample allows one to draw general conclusions because it reflects the global pattern of transitions to democracy, as is demonstrated by the lower plot in Figure 1 : the World Values Survey sample moves on almost exactly the same trajectory as the universe of all nations, although the average democracy score in the WVS sample is consistently larger than in the universe. This reflects a sampling bias: old democracies, which existed before the transition wave, and new democracies, which emerged during this wave, are over-represented. The over-supply of new democracies reflects an over-representation of former communist societies in the sample. But this peculiarity makes the sample even more suited to test modernization theory. Of course, communist regimes broke down partly because of their economic inefficiency-an inefficiency which kept modernization levels lower than they would have been with market economies. But inefficiency did not equalize the levels of economic modernization among communist societies. These societies have shown sizeable long-term differences in levels of industrialization, tertiarization, urbanization, communication, education, and per capita income, ranging from less developed countries, like Romania, to highly developed ones, such as the Czech Republic. One would expect to find similar differences in cultural modernization because cultural modernization is usually linked with economic modernization. Accordingly, Huntington concluded that: "In terms of cultural tradition, economic development and social structure, Czechoslovakia would certainly be a democracy today (and probably Hungary and Poland also) if it were not for the overriding veto of the Soviet presence" (Huntington 1984: 211) . Without the collapse of Soviet imperialism no wave of democratization would have swept across Eastern Europe in 1989. This is evident but does not invalidate modernization theory. The point is the same here as with economic inefficiency. The experience of foreign imperialism, economic inefficiency and authoritarian rule are constants, typical to more or less the same degree for all ex-communist societies. These societies provide an ideal arena in which to test modernization theory, allowing one to study the impact of modernization, holding these factors constant. Former communist societies are by no means the only new democracies in our sample, however. It includes a number of others, such as Chile, the Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, and Taiwan, making it possible to examine the post-communist societies in context with societies of profoundly different historical and cultural background, and to test whether our findings apply to post-communist countries alone. The Predictors of Democratization: Economic and Cultural Modernization Economic Modernization In the modernization literature, the most widely-used indicator of socio-economic development is per capita GDP. Other regularly used indicators include measures of mass communication and mass education as well as the size of the service sector, or "tertiarization." Composite indicators that summarize several aspects of economic modernization are rarely used. This is surprising, since economic modernization is a multifaceted phenomenon, and these facets may interact to bring about democracy. Some societies, such as the oil exporting countries, show exceptionally high figures for per capita GDP but rank low on other aspects, such as mass education. They would show intermediate rankings on a combined modernization indicator-which is more in keeping with their poor democratic performance than their GDP levels would suggest. Similarly, some post communist countries, such as Bulgaria, show anomalously high education levels, suggesting a higher democratic performance than one would expect from per capita GDP. These examples suggest that combined measures of economic modernization may be better predictors of shifts toward democracy than any single measure. Two combined indicators of economic modernization are available: the human development index provided by the United Nations Development Program and an index of resource distribution developed by Vanhanen (see Appendix for data sources and scale construction). Cultural Modernization There is little consensus on which indicators best measure cultural modernization. Indeed, one reason why neither Muller/Seligson nor Inglehart could prove that cultural modernization promotes transitions to democracy stems from the choice of the cultural variables. Inglehart used generalized trust, life satisfaction, and personal happiness (Inglehart 1997) , while Muller and Seligson use these indicators plus a measure of political moderation. No doubt, these are modern civic cultural attitudes. But it is hardly surprising that these attitudes have little to do with transitions to democracy. We do not question that generalized trust, political moderation, and life satisfaction foster the functioning of already existing democracies, as Inglehart argues. 7 But why should high levels of satisfaction, trust, and moderation tend to turn autocracies into democracies? The strengthening of autocracy would be a more plausible consequence. In keeping with modernization theory, we shall consider attitudes linked with economic modernization. These attitudes should be capable of emerging in any type of regime typeotherwise, these attitudes could not emerge within autocracies, causing the emergence of new democracies. Finally, these attitudes should be inherently related to democracy-otherwise there is no reason to expect that an increase in them would give rise to mass demands for democracy. To find the attitudes that satisfy these requirements, one must identify the focal principle of the modernization process as a whole; only then we can seek this principle's equivalent in the sphere of political culture. For this purpose, we propose an interpretation of modernization based on the principle of Human Development. Sen introduced the idea of Human Development, but we will develop this concept more systematically in section 7, introducing it only briefly here (Sen 1997) . Liberty Aspirations Following Sen, we view Human Development as the enlargement of people's capabilities and opportunities to base their lives on their own choices. Accordingly, the underlying theme of modernization in all its related aspects is individual empowerment. This holds true of economic modernization, which gives people growing physical and cognitive resources through rising incomes, education, and information. Democratization is another aspect of individual empowerment, most obvious in its emphasis on freedom rights. If eco-nomic development and democratization contribute to individual empowerment in the material and institutional spheres of society, what is their equivalent in the cultural sphere? Culture is the domain of mass aspirations, demands, and motivations. Thus, if individual empowerment occurs in the cultural sphere, it would be reflected in a motivational mobilization of the public, leading to more ambitious mass aspirations. We argue that LIBERTY aspirations, or demands for personal freedom for self-and co-determination, represent precisely such ambitious aspirations. Hence, individual empowerment in mass motivations (and thus in political culture) is present in proportion to the spread of liberty aspirations in societies. Rising liberty aspirations represent the aspect of cultural modernization for which we are searching. We hypothesize that: (1) liberty aspirations become more intense and widespread with economic modernization; (2) they do so in both democratic and non-democratic regimes; and (3) they translate into mass demands for democracy, since this is the type of regime that provides the broadest opportunities to satisfy liberty aspirations. 8 (4) Controlling for a society's initial level of democracy, liberty aspirations have a significant positive impact on transitions to democracy whenever external "gate-blockers" are removed. So far no one, not even Inglehart, has examined the impact of liberty aspirations, although this seems perfectly consistent with his general theory of postmaterialist value change. Indeed, three of the six items he uses to measure postmaterialist values focus explicitly on demands for liberties. In keeping with our theoretical framework, we hypothesize that these liberty aspirations should have a stronger impact on transitions toward democracy than any of his other items-indeed, they should have a stronger impact than any other pro-democratic attitude. The postmaterialism battery is organized into three four-item groups, each of which offers the respondents a choice between two materialist and two postmaterialist items. Three of the six postmaterialist items address political or civil liberties: "giving people more say in important government decisions," "protecting freedom of speech," and "seeing that people have more say about how things are done at their jobs and in their communities." Respondents can give each item top, second, or no priority. Depending on how the respondents ranked these items, we scored their liberty aspirations on a six-point index, with 0 indicating the lowest and 5 the highest level of liberty aspirations. When calculating averages across groups, this ordinal index becomes a continuous scale. We use the national means as indicators of given societies' mass levels of liberty aspirations. Liberty aspirations vary within societies, but the responses in each survey show single-peaked distributions that are centered on the median. Thus, national averages reflect the societies' central tendencies in liberty aspirations. 9 Liberty aspirations differ from postmaterialism in both concept and measurement. Postmaterialism combines aspirations for civil and political liberties, together with aspirations for ecological, aesthetic and ethical quality of life. These two types of aspirations can be treated as one concept-postmaterialism-when dealing with cultural change in general. But when focusing on democratization, one should differentiate between liberty aspirations and other aspirations. Giving top priority to the ecological, aesthetic, and ethical quality of life is an aspiration that may emerge in postindustrial societies, while liberty aspirations can evolve considerably earlier. To anticipate one of our findings, the relation between mass levels of liberty aspirations and a nation's democratic performance in 1995-99 shows a .72 Pearson correlation (N = 60). By contrast, the quality of life aspirations show a correlation of only .30 with democratic performance. Thus, the distinction between the two components of postmaterialism is both theoretically and empirically meaningful. 10 In 41 of our 61 societies we measured liberty aspirations using the second World Values Survey conducted in 1990-91. Assuming that transitions to democracy depend on liberty aspirations present during that change, the 1990-91 measure of liberty aspirations is perfectly suitable. This measure is located at the midpoint of the major transition period from 1985 to 1995. In another 20 societies, the measure of liberty aspirations is only available from the third WVS conducted in 1995-98. Using this measure is not ideal but not necessarily problematic. Cross-national differences in liberty aspirations are very stable over short periods of time, such as the approximately five year period between the second and third WVS. In the 30 cases for which both measures are available, the correlation in liberty aspirations between the second and third waves is .90: a given country's liberty aspirations in 1995-97 closely reflect its liberty aspirations in 1990-91. Consequently, we use one pooled measure of liberty aspirations for all 60 nations in our sample. The upper plot in Figure 2 reveals that liberty aspirations do indeed explain much of the variation in transitions toward or away from democracy. In case of "entry-autocracies" liberty aspirations explain 65 per cent of the gains in democratic performance (60% including Democracy (around 1985 Democracy (around -1995 Belarus and Croatia); 11 while among "entry-democracies," liberty aspirations explain 59 per cent of their resistance against losses of democratic performance (50% including Finland, India and Portugal). Moreover, cross-national differences in liberty aspirations can themselves be explained by variations in economic modernization. This is shown in the lower plot where the x-axis indicates cross-national variation of economic resource distribution (see Appendix for a description of this index). These findings are clearly in line with our hypotheses. Bivariate evidence, however, is insufficient to validate our argument. It is necessary to control for the effects of other variables that have been prominently discussed as correlates of democracy. We will use these variables as control predictors in regression analyses. Alternative Predictors of Democratization Alternative predictors, together with our major predictors, are listed in Table 1 . A detailed description of scale construction is given in the Appendix. We tried to include all predictors to which the literature assigns a significant role in promoting democracy. We refer only briefly to the reasons why these indicators are assumed to be linked with democracy. 12 The predictors can be differentiated into three groups: socio-structural, political cultural and a third group that reflects the international environment. The socio-structural predictors include several indicators of economic modernization: 11 Belarus and Croatia, together with the countries along the chain from Pakistan to the Philippines in Figure 1 (upper plot), show less impact of liberty aspirations on democratic change. These societies' liberty aspirations show larger intra-national variance than most other countries. 12 For more detailed arguments concerning nearly all of these predictors see Dahl 1993: chapter 5. By contrast, MILITARISM (soldiers per inhabitants, share of military expenditure) has been considered detrimental to democracy. Among the political cultural indicators claimed to be associated with democracy are LIFE satisfaction, HUMAN tolerance (in terms of ethnicity and sexual orientation), PROTEST behavior, INTERPERSONAL empathy, GENERALIZED trust, INSTITUTIONAL confidence (to political and order institutions), ASSOCIATIONAL activity, SOCIAL bonds, POLITICAL moderation, and POLITICAL interest. These indicators reflect cultural modernization, civic culture, social capital, or the presence of "democratic personalities" in mass cultures (Almond and Verba 1963; Putnam 1993) . But as we argued, in contrast to liberty aspirations, it is not clear whether these attitudes only sustain already existing democracy, whether they themselves derive from prior experience with democracy, or whether they actually contribute to converting autocracy into democracy. Another predictor, RELIGIOUSNESS, reflects cultural traditionalism rather than cultural modernization. This indicator is therefore assumed to be negatively associated with democracy. The third group of predictors reflects the international environment. Adherents of world system theory argue that a society's position in the global economy determines its chances of being democratic: the more central a country's status in the world economy, the better its chances to sustain democracy (Bollen and Jackman 1985) . We measure a society's centrality in the world economy (WORLD system position) by its per capita value of exports. Another international variable prominently discussed is diffusion or contagion. Many authors argue that democratization waves occur through regional chain reactions, when a transition in one country triggers similar changes in neighboring countries. We measure CONTAGION by assigning each country the average democratic change in its region. 13 PROSPERITY ( Competing Predictors of Democratic Change The following tables contain many results worth discussing, but we will focus on our theoretical concern, the impact of economic and cultural modernization-in particular, liberty aspirations. We will discuss only results that are relevant to this. We find that indicators of economic modernization (tertiarization in case of entry-autocracies, economic resource distribution in case of entry-democracies) and our indicator of cultural modernization (liberty aspirations for both entry-groups) are among the most significant and strongest correlates of regime change. The next question is whether these findings hold up in multivariate regressions. Regressing regime change on all of these predictors, raises the problem of many variables and few cases. Consequently, our predictors must surmount several hurdles to be used in the summary models. Our first step was to estimate separate equations for the three types of predictors, calculating partial models for socio-structural, political cultural, and international effects. This produces six partial models, three for entry-autocracies and three for entry-democracies. The partial models are shown in Appendix- Table A1 . Second, we introduce only those predictors that prove to be significant on the bivariate level (as indicated in Table 1 ). Ethnic polarization, for example, was not introduced into the sociostructural model for entry-autocracies, but it has been included for entry-democracies. Third, predictors that sharply diminish the number of observations are not used. This applies to income equality, with entry-autocracies, where the data cover only 13 of 34 cases. Fourth, we implement backward deletion in the regression procedure, eliminating the least significant predictor in the first step. Elimination is then repeated until only significant predictors remain. Predictors that surmount these hurdles, qualify for the summary models. The summary models are shown in Table 2 . When there is no entry for a given predictor, this predictor qualified for the partial model but was eliminated there by the backward deletion procedure. A line indicates that the predictor was introduced into the summary model but was eliminated here by backward deletion. In all models we calculated the variance inflation factor of each predictor (labeled VIF) in order to detect multicollinearity. In none of the models did these factors exceed a value of 5.0. Our results are therefore not contaminated with multicollinearity. 14 In addition, we used the DFFITs statistic to identify outliers and influential cases. Such unusual cases are identified when the DFFITs statistic exceeds a specific value that depends on the number of cases and predictors. 15 Instead of excluding unusual cases, we implemented "bounded influence estimation" using weights for the unusual cases calculated from the DFFITs. In the presence of unusual cases "influence bounding" is necessary to make OLS-results reliable (see Dietz, Frey, and Kalof 1987; Moon and Dixon 1992) . Although our weighted least squares results hardly differ from those of ordinary least squares regression, we report the methodologically preferable results from weighted least squares. Unusual cases and their weights are documented in the tables. The summary models explain less variance in regime change among entry-democracies (69%) than among entry-autocracies (93%). This probably reflects the fact that, in an era of democratic triumph, democracies faced less serious challenges than autocracies. From our theoretical perspective, however, the most important result is that liberty aspirations are the only variable surviving all selection procedures for both entry-autocracies and entrydemocracies. Liberty aspirations emerge as the most significant predictor in both types of 14 Variance inflation factors measure collinearity among predictors. Following a common convention, the values should remain below 5.0. Otherwise, the magnitudes of coefficients are adulterated (Judge et al. 1988: 869) . The formula for the variance inflation factor is: VIF = 1 / (1 -R j 2 ). 15 DFFITs indicate for each observation the scaled change in model fit when this observation is deleted. The formula is: DFFITS i = (h i / 1 -h i ) ½ * e i where h i is the leverage of the i-th observation and e i is its studentized residual. The cutting point for classifying cases as unusual is: 2 √ (k + 1) / (n -k -1) where "k" is the number of predictors and "n" the number of observations. See Welsch 1980: 164-167. societies. And as the partial correlations demonstrate, liberty aspirations explain the largest amount of the variation in regime change. Again this is true for both entry-autocracies and entry-democracies. Controlling for liberty aspirations, the effects of economic modernization (which were significant in the partial models) turn out to be insignificant. Economic modernization seems to be important only in so far as it contributes to rising libertyaspirations. Mass-level liberty aspirations help shape both the transition to democracy in autocracies, and the persistence of democratic institutions in already established democracies. These results contradict Przeworski/Limongi's claim that modernization does not contribute to the emergence of democracy. Similarly, our findings cast serious doubt on both Muller/Seligson's and Inglehart's findings that mass attitudes have no significant impact on shifts toward or away from democracy. Liberty aspirations seem to have been crucial in the Third Wave of democratization. The Origin of Liberty Aspirations We hypothesized that economic modernization is conducive to rising liberty aspirations, regardless of whether a society has experienced democracy or autocracy. This assumption is crucial in determining whether liberty aspirations lead to democracy, or vice versa. In order to prove that liberty aspirations are causally prior to democracy, we must demonstrate that liberty aspirations are not determined by a society's prior experience with democracy, once we control for economic modernization. We test this assumption by regressing liberty aspirations on various indicators of prior democratic performance and economic modernization. In addition, we include Western cultural heritage as a control predictor. Thus, the regression comprises three different possible sources of liberty aspirations: economic development, regime experience, and cultural tradition. The result in Table 3 is unequivocally clear: controlling for economic modernization, prior experience with democracy has no significant impact on liberty aspirations; while economic modernization has a powerful impact, even controlling for democracy and Western cultural heritage. Our findings leave little room for an alternative causal interpretation. Several reasons invalidate the counter-argument that liberty aspirations are simply the result of democracy. We have just demonstrated that prior experience with democracy does not have a significant effect on liberty aspirations. Liberty aspirations depend primarily on long-term differences in economic development. Furthermore, the available evidence indicates that liberty aspirations are themselves relatively persistent over time, growing gradually with economic development. Persistence alone argues against reverse causation: the sudden regime changes that took place between 1985 and 1995 can not have created differences in liberty aspirations that persist over time and were present already earlier. Our findings point to a prevailing (though not necessarily exclusive) causal flow from economic development to rising liberty aspirations to democratization. Human Development as the Focus in the Modernization-Democratization Nexus Statistical evidence of a dominant causal flow does not, by itself, provide theoretical reasons for it. The search for such reasons leads back to the logic of the modernization process. Various authors have proposed reasons why economic development and democracy are related, or why democracy and civic values, or why civic values and economic development, are related. But these reasons are discussed in isolation for each bivariate relation. Even the most encompassing studies dissolve the triangular nexus into bivariate relations, which are discussed independently of each other. 16 Since a theory must be more general than the relation it tries to explain, there is no coherent theory of the modernization-democratization nexus. One of the most central facts of cross-national research still lacks a comprehensive interpretation: the fact that economic development, civic culture (in particular liberty aspirations), and democracy represent one common syndrome of societal reality. This can be demonstrated by various kinds of factor analyses. Regardless of whether we use all indicators available for more than 50 cases, or only those that proved significant in the summary models, the result is the same (see Table 4 ): economic development, liberty aspirations, and democracy all load on the first principal component and they show the strongest loadings on it. They form a robust and distinct dimension in different variants of exploratory factor analysis. What underlying dimension do these variables reflect? One may easily answer, "modernization." But then we need to give that term a substantive meaning-a meaning that specifies each variable's relationship to this underlying principle. What is the common denominator of economic development, liberty aspirations, and democracy? We suggest that these variables work together in enhancing individual empowerment. Economic development leads to individual empowerment by making more resources available; liberty aspirations reflect motivational empowerment, giving rise to growing mass demands for self-determination; and democracy brings institutional empowerment by guaranteeing political rights and civil liberties. These variables converge in the principle of individual empowerment (see Table 5 ). We characterize this principle as Human Development because increasing individual empowerment contributes to developing a society's inherent human potential. A growing proportion of the people have larger capabilities, stronger motivations and wider opportunities to make use of their human talents and predilections. Human Development does not necessarily proceed in linear fashion. Instead, the three elements of Human Development tend to coincide in either regressing or progressing, with societies scoring low or high in one of these elements tending to score low or high in the other elements as well. Entries are factor loadings from principal components analysis with varimax rotation. Loadings below .10 suppressed. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure: .62. N = 56. With this concept of the focal principle in the modernization-nexus, we can revisit the causal problem from a more general perspective. The decisive question is whether the logic of individual empowerment points to any causal priority in the emergence of its elements. In the promotion of individual empowerment, economic development contributes capabilities, liberty aspirations give rise to demands, and democracy provides opportunities (maintained by freedom rights). Thus, logic suggests two causal priorities: capabilities give rise to demands, and demands give rise to opportunities. The first priority is logical because capabilities set the margin for demands that can be effectively pursued. It is irrational for people to evolve aspirations for goals that are clearly beyond their capabilities. Numerous studies, in widely varying countries, have found that people with relatively limited economic and cognitive capabilities place less emphasis on political participation. 17 People are less likely to aspire to things that are out of reach. Con-versely, more ambitious demands, such as those connected with postmaterialism, are most pronounced among people with greater economic and cognitive capabilities. 18 Similarly, liberty aspirations tend to be more widespread among people with greater capabilities. 19 As economic development increases people's capabilities, it gives rise to higher aspirations. Consequently, mass publics in countries with higher levels of economic development show stronger liberty aspirations. This corresponds to the logic of individual empowerment: capabilities set the parameters for effective demands. The second priority, that of demands over opportunities, is also logical, since demands set the parameters for pressure on given opportunities. In democratic transitions, liberty aspirations work as the demand-function (demands for freedom rights), whereas democracy itself serves as the supply-function (supply of freedom rights). If demands are primarily nourished by capabilities, an inadequate level of democracy will not prevent rising demands for democracy. For instance, Czechoslovakia had for many decades much lower levels of democracy than India, but it nevertheless developed substantially stronger liberty aspirations-in accordance with its higher level of economic development. This relation is not deterministic. But in so far as there is an empirical connection between liberty aspirations and democratization, it is more plausible to ascribe causal primacy to liberty aspirations: demands for freedom set the parameters for opportunities for freedom. The logic of individual empowerment implies a causal priority of capabilities over demands and a priority of demands over opportunities. These priorities reflect a prevailing (though not exclusive) causal flow from economic development to liberty aspirations to democracy. Positive feed back loops in the reverse direction may well exist, creating a selfreinforcing cycle of Human Development. But the logic of individual empowerment as well as the statistical evidence indicate that the main effects follow the Human Development sequence. Conclusion Our analysis is based on the largest sample of societies ever used to analyze the impact of cultural modernization on democratization. This analysis also used, for the first time, a change variable based on each nation's particular timing in its shift toward, or away from, democracy over the last 20 years. We focused on a major manifestation of cultural modernization: mass-level liberty aspirations, a variable previously ignored in empirical studies of regime transitions. Our attention was drawn to the role of liberty aspirations by the concept of Human Development, which moves beyond standard modernization theory. Usually, theoretical concepts cannot maximize comprehensiveness and specificness at the same time. But the concept of Human Development does. On one hand, Human Development is a comprehensive concept that integrates changes in three distinct spheres of society: socio-economic structures, political culture, and regime institutions. On the other hand, the concept is specific because it integrates the changes in these spheres into one theme: individual empowerment. Finally and foremost, the principle of individual empowerment entails a more general logic that implies causal priorities in the emergence of economic development, liberty aspirations, and democracy (one that is supported by statistical evidence). Our analysis is unusual in that we relate change-rates in one variable to level-differences in another. Doing so, we demonstrated a statistical relation between a variable that is relatively stable (cultural modernization) and another variable that can change suddenly (democracy). Logically, there is only one causal interpretation for this type of relation. Sudden changes cannot cause long-term level-differences that already existed earlier. Level-differences, however, can produce varying change-rates if a third effect (such as a shift in international regime support) removes a "gate-blocker" that prevented level-differences from bringing corresponding changes. In this way, one can explain rates of regime change from levels of modernization. We did not analyze when democratic transitions occur. We took the occurrence of democratic transitions as a given and attempted to pre-dict their range. Any explanation of the occurrence of transition waves must take international regime support into account. But once transitions occur, any explanation of their ranges should recognize modernization factors, especially liberty aspirations. We did not analyze the mechanisms how mass-level liberty aspirations translate into groupings and actions that bring about regime change. But such mechanisms must exist. Otherwise mass-level liberty aspirations would have no significant effect on subsequent regime changes. Actually, this effect is profound and can not be simply ruled out. This shifts the burden of proof to those who believe that regime changes are unaffected by prevailing mass preferences and simply a matter of voluntary elite action. 20 We lack sufficient longitudinal data to provide a final proof, but available statistical evidence, plus theoretical reasons, point to a primary causal flow from liberty aspirations to democracy. This finding contradicts the claim that mass attitudes are insignificant for the emergence of modern democracies. Many scholars have been trying to identify the mass attitudes that are most conducive to democracy, but none of them explicitly pointed to liberty aspirations. Adherents of the actors-approach accept that the consolidation of democracy is somehow linked with development, but they still believe that change toward democracy depends on voluntary elite action. The fact that mass liberty aspirations explains 65 to 93 per cent of the variance in our model, indicates that elites are only part of the story. The residual in our models probably reflects the leeway that collective actors have in steering democratic change; but this residual is relatively small, though not negligible. Hence, the leverage of collective actors seems to involve mainly when and how they can bring democratic change, rather than how far it will go. were counted as democratic when a country scored on at least 8 points on the 10-point democracy scale of Gurr and Jaggers, "Polity III" data (Jaggers and Gurr 1995, ICPSR #6695) . Contagion: each country scores at the average regime change of its region from 1985 to 1995. Regional averages were calculated for all countries scored by Freedom House. Regions defined due to Inglehart's concept of "cultural zones" (Inglehart and Baker 2000) . World system position: logged US-$ of exports per capita 1994, Human Development Report 1998. The following variables are taken from the second and third World Values Surveys. Life satisfaction: national average on a 10-point rating scale for life satisfaction (v96). *Human tolerance: sexuality: "not mentioned" for "disliked neighbors" selected and dichotomized as 1 against 0; scores added for neighbors with AIDS (v58) and homosexual neighbors (v60); aggregate measure is a national average on a 0-2 scale. *Human tolerance: ethnicity: scores added for neighbors of different nationality (v52), different religion (v57) and immigrants (v58). *Protest behavior: "already done" for "participation" dichotomized; scores for petition (v118), boycott (v119), and demonstration (v120) added; aggregate measure is an average on a 0-3 scale. Interpersonal empathy: percentage of people opting for "understand others' preferences" when asked what is "important for human relations" (v48). Generalized trust: percentage of respondents believing "most people can be trusted" (v27). Social bonds: "very important" dichotomized for "importance of family" (v4) and "importance of friends" (v5); scores added to a 0-2 scale. *Institutional confidence: order: "very" and "quite" confident dichotomized; scores for church (v135), army (v136), police (v141) and legal system (v137) added to a 0-4 scale. *Institutional confidence: politics: scores for parliament (v144), government (v142), parties (v143), and civil service (v145) added to 0-4 scale. Political moderation: percentage of respondents opting for "gradual reforms" when asked for their preferred mode of societal change (v124). Political interest: percentage of respondents who report to "discuss politics" "frequently" with friends (v37). *Associational activity: "active membership" dichotomized; scores added for religious associations (v28), education, arts and music associations (v30), environmental associations (v33), and charitable associations (v35). Religiousness: "importance of god in one's life," national average on a 10-point scale (1: not at all important, 10:very important). *Items that are summarized in additive indices form a distinct principal component in exploratory factor analyses of the related item batteries, using the pooled individual data. Figure 1 : 1 The Global "Explosion" of Democracy Figure 2 : 2 The Impact of Liberty Aspirations on Democratic Change and of Economic Development per capita GDP), EDUCATION (years of full time education, tertiary enrollment), TERTIARIZATION (service sector share), and two composite indicators: the HUMAN development index and the Vanhanen-index of ECONOMIC resource distribution. Control predictors that may counterbalance the impact of economic modernization are cleavage indicators: INCOME equality (income share of poorest quintile, income ratio of poorest to richest quintile), ETHNIC polarity (percentage second largest ethnic group), LINGUISTIC fractionalization, and RELIGIOUS fractionalization. These predictors are often assumed to be detrimental to democracy. The next group of predictors indicates religious traditions. A number of authors have argued that PROTESTANTISM (percentage protestants) or WESTERN Cultural heritage (percentage protestants plus Catholics) is conducive to democracy, while ISLAM (percentage Muslims) is not. Finally, it has been claimed that relatively high STATE capacity (tax revenue, government consumption) is crucial to well-functioning democracy. Table 1 : 1 Bivariate Correlations with Democratic Change: Pearson's R (N) Correlates Entry-Autocracies Entry-Democracies Social structure: Prosperity (log GDP p.c.) .44 * (31) .69 *** (28) Education: time .61 ** (27) .67 *** (28) Education: enrollment .39 * (27) .33 (26) Tertiarization (serivce sector size) .66 *** (29) .53 ** (28) Human Development Index .58 ** (30) .61 ** (28) Economic resource distribution .45 * (31) .75 *** (27) Income equality: share poorest quintile -.12 (13) .52 * (22) Income equality: richest to poorest ratio .31 (13) -.2 * (22) Ethnic polarity -.06 (34) -.6 * (28) Linguistic fractionalization .04 (33) .05 (28) Protestantism .42 * (32) .52 * (27) Western Christianity .65 *** (33) .19 (28) Islamism -.57 (30) -.4 (28) Religious fractionalization -.03 (33) .23 (27) State capacity: tax revenue .60 * (13) .66 *** (25) State capacity: government consumption .27 (28) .65 *** (26) Militarism: soldiers per inhabitants -.24 (31) .19 (27) Militarism: governm. expenditure -.50 ** (27) -.4 (27) Political culture: Liberty aspirations .73 *** (34) .69 *** (28) Life satisfaction .28 (33) .57 ** (28) Human tolerance (sexuality) .39 * (33) .54 ** (27) Human tolerance (ethnicity) -.31 (32) .28 (27) Protest behavior .36 * (32) .52 ** (28) Interpersonal empathy .11 (31) .64 (16) Generalized trust -.12 (34) .73 *** (28) Social bonds: friendship -.21 (34) .25 (28) Institutional confidence: order -.31 (34) .34 (28) Institutional confidence: politics -.30 (31) .14 (17) Political moderation -.02 (34) .17 (28) Political interest .41 * (34) -.8 (28) Associational activity .04 (31) -.4 (28) Religiousness -.10 (33) -.9 *** (28) International environment: Contagion .74 *** (34) -.1 (28) World system position: log exports p.c. .67 *** (32) .76 *** (28) Significance levels: *** p < .001; ** p < .01; * p < .10. Table 2 2 : Regressing Democratic Change on Structural, Cultural and International Predictors: Summary Models Entry-Autocracies Entry-Democracies Predictors B (SE) part. R VIF B (SE) part. R VIF Social structure: Tertiarization (serivce sector size) --- - - Economic resource distribution --- - - Western christianity --- - - Islamism --- - - State capacity: government consump. --- - - Militarism: governm. expenditure -.54** (.15) -.63 1.48 --- - - Political culture: Liberty aspirations 14.07*** (2.09) .84 2.08 6.44** (2.21) .54 1.54 Generalized trust 12.39* (6.97) .36 2.09 Religousness -1.23* (.64) -.39 1.94 Political interest --- - - International environment: Contagion .25** (.07) .66 2.04 World system position: exports p. c. 1.76* (.80) .45 2.76 --- - - Constant -9.51** (3.48) -16.37* (8.08) Multiple R squared (adjusted) .93 .69 N 26 28 Weighted least squares: weights Weighted least squares: weight for China (.92), Russia (.16) for Portugal (.62) No entry: variable not introduced; --: backwards deletion; *** p < .001; ** p < .01; * p < .10. Table 3 : 3 Regressing Liberty Aspirations on Prior Democratic Performance and Economic Modernization, controlled for Religious Tradition Model 1 Model 2 Table 4 : 4 The Dimensional Location of the Human Development Components Factor 1: Factor 2: Factor 3: Human Ethnic Religous development division community Economic resource distribution .89 -.22 Liberty aspirations .87 .17 Democratic performance, 1995-99 .86 -.14 Generalized trust .66 -.19 -.28 Ethnic polarity -.17 .86 .19 Linguistic fractionalization -.14 .85 Religousness -.33 .11 .83 Association activity .19 .20 .76 Islamism -.44 -.38 .54 Explained variance 40% 19% 15% Table 5 : 5 The Concept of Human Development The three components of Human Development (HD) Economic component Cultural component Institutional component Meaning of the Human resources Liberty aspirations Freedom rights HD-components Spheres in which the Socio-economic structure Political culture Regime institutions HD-components emerge Processes generating the Economic development Value change Democratization HD-components Components' contribution Individual empowerment Individual empowerment Individual empowerment to HD through larger capabilities through rising demands thr. wider opportunities Causal priority in the Capabilities Demands Opportunities emergence of components Focal point in which the Individual empowerment on a mass-level = Human Development of societies components converge Among many others, following studies all show strong relationships between socioeconomic development and democracy:Lipset 1959; Cutright 1963; Olsen 1968; Bollen 1983; Diamond 1992; Huber, Rueschemeyer, and Stephens 1993; Lipset, Kyoung-Ryung, and Torres 1993; Barro 1997; Vanhanen 1997; Gasiorowski and Power 1998. We reversed the Freedom House scores so that 1 indicates the lowest and 7 the highest level on the scales for political rights and civil liberties. The percentages mentioned above refer to the universe of all states scored by Freedom House. See Appendix for scale construction and data sources. Data drawn from Freedom House's Internet page: "http:\\www.freedomhouse.org." Methods and indicators described there. 4 On request we deliver these plots to the interested reader. 5 Ranging from 1 to 7, the scales for civil liberties and political rights are divided by the neutral value 4into an autocratic side (values below 4) and a democratic side (above 4). The highest value on the autocratic side is 3 so that 9 (3 x 3) is the upper limit for autocracies on the product scale. Conversely, the lowest value on the democratic side is 5 so that 25 (5 x 5) is the lower limit for democracies on the product scale. Information on sampling, questionnaire and access to data can be obtained from the World Values Study Group's Internet page: "http://wvs.isr.umich.edu." At this point Inglehart follows Putnam 1993. The accumulation of liberty aspirations must overcome certain collective action hurdles in order to promote democratic change. Such hurdles may be high, especially when an external power supports autocracy. But when these hurdles are removed, it becomes likely that liberty aspirations will translate into groups and actions that seek democracy, with the success of democracy rising in proportion to the strength of liberty aspirations among mass publics. We admit that national aggregates of survey data sometimes obscure large between-group variances within nations. However, this does not mean that national aggregates of survey data are meaningless measures that have no impact on structural societal features, such as democracy. As we will show, such an impact does exist. 10 Liberty aspirations include one item ("seeing that people have more say about how things are done at their jobs and in their communities") that is not included in the short version of postmaterialism. Dropping this item from the index of liberty aspirations, the correlation with democratic performance in 1995-99 falls to .62. A similar measure has been used byGasiorowski and Power (1998) . The most comprehensive study of the relationships between economic development, cultural change, and democratic institutions isInglehart and Baker 2000. These are basic findings of the following studies (among others):Inkeles and Smith 1974; Barnes, Kaase et. al. 1979; Fuchs and Klingemann 1995; Dalton 1996. These findings are well documented inBrint 1984; Inglehart 1990; Scarbrough 1995. 19 In 95 per cent of the national WVS-studies-ranging from Nigeria to China to Sweden-there is a highly significant positive relationship between liberty aspirations and levels of income and education. There are two possibilities how mass-level liberty aspirations translate into democratization. One is that liberty aspirations determine the strength of popular movements for democracy. The other one is that they determine the strength of liberal reformers among the elites. To refuse the latter would imply that elites are unaffected by a society's prevailing values and attitudes, which is inherently implausible. Appendix Wir erbitten von allen Bestellern, die Arbeitspapiere vom WZB anfordern, eine 1 DM-Briefmarke pro Papier als pauschalen Beitrag zu den anfallenden Versandkosten. 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Wir bitten um Verständnis und darum, unbedingt wie beschrieben zu verfahren. _____________________________________________________________________ Stamps for Papers We ask for a 1 DM-postage stamp per paper from all those who wish to order WZBpapers and who live in Germany. These stamps contribute to the shipment costs incurred. All persons interested in WZB-papers from abroad are kindly requested to send one "Coupon-Réponse International" (international reply coupon) for each ordered paper. The coupons can be obtained at your local post office. The reasons for these measures are the high increase in the number of ordered papers during the last months as well as the cut in funds imposed on publicly financed institutions like the WZB. We do ask for your understanding and hope that you will comply with the above mentioned procedure. The Civic Culture Gabriel A Almond Sidney Verba Princeton University Press Princeton, NJ Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies Samuel H Barnes Max Kaase Beverly Hills and London: Sage Determinants of Economic Growth Robert J Barro MIT Press Cambridge World System Position, Dependency and Democracy Kenneth Bollen American Sociological Review 48 Political Democracy and the Size Distribution of Income Kenneth A Bollen Robert W Jackman American Sociological Review 50 New Class and Cumulative Trend Explanations of the Liberal Political Attitudes of Professionals Steven Brint American Journal of Sociology 90 Comparative Democracy Ross E Burkhart Michael S Lewis-Beck American Political Science Review 88 National Political Development Cutright C Phillips American Sociological Review 28 Democracy and Its Critics Robert A Dahl Citizen Politics New Haven; Dalton, Russell J; Chatham Chatham House Economic Development and Democracy Reconsidered Larry Diamond Reexamining Democracy, eds. Gary Marks and Larry Diamond. London: Sage The Globalization of Democracy Larry Diamond Global Transformation and the Third World Robert O. Slater, Barry M. Schutz, and Steven Dorr. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Estimation with Cross-National Data. Robust and Nonparametric Methods Thomas Dietz R Scott Frey Linda Kalof American Sociological Review 52 Reassessing the Three Waves of Democratization Renske Doorenspleet World Politics 52 A Culturalist Theory of Political Change Harry Eckstein American Political Science Review 82 Gradations of Democracy? Empirical Tests of Alternative Conceptualizations Zachary Elkins American Journal of Political Science 44 Citizens and the State Dieter Fuchs Hans-Dieter Klingemann Citizens and the State Hans-Dieter Klingemann and Dieter Fuchs Oxford Oxford University Press The Structural Determinants of Democratic Consolidation Mark Gasiorowski Timothy Power Comparative Political Studies 31 Empirical Linkages Between Democracy and Economic Growth John F Helliwell British Journal of Political Science 24 The Impact of Economic Development on Democracy Evelyne Huber Dietrich Rueschemeyer John D Stephens Journal of Economic Perspectives 7 Will More Countries Become Democratic? Samuel P Huntington Political Science Quarterly 99 Samuel P Huntington Modernization and Postmodernization London; Inglehart, Ronald; Princeton; Inglehart, Ronald; Princeton Princeton University Press The Third Wave Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values Ronald Inglehart Wayne E Baker American Sociological Review 65 Exploring Individual Modernity Alex Inkeles Columbia University Press New York Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries Alex Inkeles Smith H David Harvard University Press Cambridge Tracking Democracy's Third Wave with the Polity III Data Keith Jaggers Ted Robert Gurr Journal of Peace Research 32 Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Econometrics George Judge Wiley New York Waves of Democratization Charles Kurzman Studies in Comparative International Development 33 Some Social Requisites of Democracy Seymour M Lipset American Political Science Review 53 A Comparative Analysis of the Social Requisites of Democracy Seymour M Lipset Seong Kyoung-Ryung John Charles Torres International Social Science Journal 45 Democratization in Long Perspective George Modelski Gardner Perry Technological Forecasting and Social Change 39 Basic Needs and Growth-Welfare Trade-Offs Bruce E Moon William J Dixon International Studies Quarterly 36 Civic Culture and Democracy Edward N Muller Mitchell A Seligson American Political Science Review 88 Multivariate Analysis of National Political Development Marvin E Olsen American Sociological Review 33 Modernization: Theories and Facts Adam Przeworski Fernando Limongi World Politics 49 Making Democracy Work Robert D Putnam Princeton University Press Princeton, NJ Political Change and Underdevelopment Vicky Randall Robin Theobald Duke University Press Durham Promoting Polyarchy William I Robinson Cambridge University Press Cambridge Materialist-Postmaterialist Value Orientations Elinor Scarbrough The Impact of Values Elinor Scarbrough and Jan van Deth Oxford Oxford University Press Human Capital and Human Capability Amartya Sen World Development 25 Regime Change and the Restructuring of Alliances Randolph M Siverson Harvey Starr American Journal of Political Science 38 Tatu Vanhanen Prospects of Democracy Regression Sensitivity Analysis and Bounded-Influence Estimation Roy E Welsch Evaluation of Econometric Models Jan Kmenta and James B. Ramsey New York Academic Press Richard A Zeller Edward G Carmines Measurement in the Social Sciences Cambridge Cambridge University Press Income equality: poorest to richest ratio: ratio of poorest to richest quintile, same source. Ethnic polarity: percentage of the second largest ethnic group around the mid 1980s, from 1990 and 1993 Britannica Book of the Year. Linguistic fractionalization: Rae-index of fractionalization calculated from the number and proportion of language groups, Britannica Book of the Year 1998. Protestantism: percentage protestants ca. mid 1980s, same source as for ethnic polarity. Western Cultural heritage: percentage Protestants plus Catholics ca. mid 1980s, same source. Islamism: percentage Muslims ca. mid 1980s, same source. Religious fractionalization: Rae-index of fractionalization calculated from the number and proportion of religious groups, Britannica Book of the Year 1998. State capacity: tax revenue: share of the state's tax revenue in GDP as of 1989-90 The following sections describe our variables and data sources. Prosperity: logged per capita GDP in US-Dollar at market exchange rates in 1990, United Nations Statistical Yearbook Militarism: soldiers per inhabitants: soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants. Britannica Book of the Year. Militarism: government expenditure: per cent military expenditure in total government expenditure 1995, same source. Years of continuous democracy: counted from the first complete year in national independence till 1985. except post-Soviet and post-Yugoslav states that obtained the values of the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia. Years FS III Contexts of Political Protest in Western Democracies: Political Organization and Modernity. Edeltraud Roller und Bernhard Wessels FS III Problemreich Und Konfliktgeladen Lokale Demokratie in Deutschland fünf Jahre nach der Vereinigung. Thomas R. Cusack und Bernhard Weßels FS III Social Alliances and Coalitions: The Organizational Underpinnings of Democracy in West Germany Bernhard Wessels FS III Abbau des Sozialstaats. Einstellungen der Bundesbürger zu Kürzungen von Sozialleistungen in den neunziger Jahren. Edeltraud Roller FS III System Characteristics Matter: Empirical Evidence from Ten Representation Studies. Bernhard Wessels FS III Wohin geht der Wandel der demokratischen Institutionen in Deutschland? Die Entwicklung der Demokratievorstellungen der Deutschen seit ihrer Vereinigung. Dieter Fuchs FS III Legislative Recruitment in Germany: Professionalization or Political Class? Bernhard Wessels FS III Social Capital, Institutional Structures, and Democratic Performance: A Comparative Study of German Local Governments Cusack FS III 97-202 The Electoral Process in the Unified Germany R Thomas Dieter Fuchs Und Robert Rohrschneider FS III Kriterien demokratischer Performanz in Liberalen Demokratien Dieter Fuchs FS III Vom Konsens zum Dissens? Politische Ordnungspräferenzen von Eliten und Bürgern im ost-westdeutschen Vergleich. Christian Welzel FS III Mapping Political Support in the 1990s: A Global Analysis Hans-Dieter Klingemann Economic Conditions, and Democratic Performance in Transitional Regimes. Hans-Dieter Klingemann und Richard I. Hofferbert FS III 98-204 The Political Culture of Unified Germany FS III 98-203 Remembering the Bad Old Days: Human Rights Näherung oder Richtung? Der Theorienstreit der Wahlforschung aus der Sicht politischer Repräsentation. Christian Welzel und Thomas R. Cusack FS III Analyzing Democratic Change and Stability: A Human Development Theory of Democracy Christian Welzel und Ronald Inglehart FS III Soziale Integration und politische Institutionen in modernen Gesellschaften. Dieter Fuchs FS III 99-204 Die demokratische Gemeinschaft in den USA und in Deutschland Political Consequences of Germany's Mixed-Member System: Personalization at the Grass-Roots? Hans-Dieter Klingemann und Bernhard Wessels FS III 00-201 Structures of diversity of press and broadcasting systems: The institutional context of public communication in Western democracies Katrin Voltmer FS III 00-202 Ideology-Driven Public Opinion Formation in Europe: The Case of Third Sector Attitudes in Sweden Staffan Kumlin FS III Ostdeutschland: Zwischen Eigensinn und Paternalismus. Wolfgang Schroeder FS III Ministerial Bureaucracies as Stand-In Agenda Setters? A Comparative Description. Kai-Uwe Schnapp Typen und Indizes demokratischer Regime Eine Analyse des Präsidentialismus-und des Veto-Spieler-Ansatzes Dieter Fuchs FS III 00-206 Eastward Enlargement of the European Union and the Identity of Europe Dieter Fuchs Hans-Dieter Klingemann FS III 00-207 Democracy and Its Discontents in Post-Wall Germany Richard I Hofferbert Hans-Dieter Klingemann Human Development as a General Theory of Social Change: A Multi-Level and Cross-Cultural Perspective Human Development and the "Explosion" of Democracy: Variations of Regime Change across 60 Societies Christian Welzel und Ronald Inglehart (xsd:string)
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