ABSTRACT
When asked the difference between economics and political science, Hans Morgenthau described the former as defining interests in terms of money and the latter as defining interests in terms of power. Economists seem to have staked out the easier turf, at least from this definitional vantage point. Power is simply a far more slippery concept than money, at whatever level of specificity, and as a consequence, political scientists have been far less successful than economists in efforts to apply scientific rigor to their respective fields. In fact, political scientists lack agreed-upon definitions for many of their most central concepts, especially those concepts in practice. That problem plagues the topic at hand in this volume—democracy—and its attendant concepts, such as democratic transitions.
