ABSTRACT
Does democracy require fertile soil to sprout and strike root, or can it also grow and survive in a context bereft of favorable structural conditions? The democratization literature features very different answers to these questions. The theories emphasizing the importance of modernization and class struggle for democratization processes answer ‘Yes’ to the first question and therefore ‘No’ to the second. Transition theory – or transitology, as it has also been labeled – adopts the opposite answer to the first question and also, more implicitly, to the second.
