ABSTRACT
The comprehensive study of the V-Dem Institute rates Timor-Leste with 0.500 in the ‘Liberal Democracy Index’, on the threshold of democracy. The case of Timor-Leste is one in which democracy was installed by virtue of a combination of the exercise of external conditionalities forged in the wake of the end of the Cold War, and the adhesion to that idea by a sizeable part of the local elite. The million-dollar question in political science is the one that considers what it takes to bring about a democracy in a given country and to sustain it for a reasonable period of time. Some regularities have been found in comparative studies, but the world is full of exceptions to the various propositions of hard rules. Timor-Leste disposed of a number of significant strengths and opportunities to develop a democracy – but the country also suffered from several weaknesses and threats to the survival of its chosen regime.
