ABSTRACT
Until now, this book has only provided descriptive inference.1 Having done so with respect to the dependent variable of the political regime form, it is time to target the issue of causal inference.2
To reiterate, we need to answer three empirical questions, thereby testing two theoretical hypotheses. First, why does democracy reign supreme in EastCentral Europe? Second, why has autocracy held its own in Central Asia? Third, why are so many of the countries that are situated in between hybrid regimes? The hypotheses formulated in the Introduction posit that i) both proximate and deep explanations within the literature enable us to account for these empirical regularities and, critically, that ii) the deeper or structural factors also account for the proximate or actor-centred choices, therefore allowing us to create an integrated explanatory paradigm.
