ABSTRACT
Do changing economic conditions create political instability? This is an old question, posed over a century ago by Alexis de Tocqueville (2001) in his classic study of France’s Old Regime. In the post–World War II world, economists and political scientists were particularly concerned that decolonialization and economic modernization in the developing countries might threaten world stability. By the early 1980s, sociologists and others had spent more than a decade debunking theories of modernization, and the political development literature was considered passé. Social science seemingly had wearied of the question and had moved on to sexier topics: iterative strategic games, the structure/agent problem, political opportunity, and contention. But the critiques never destroyed the conventional wisdoms: economists still believed that growth rates and inequality affect political stability (Alesina et al. 1996; Venieris and Gupta 1983) and political scientists asserted that economic conditions affect voting and support for political institutions (Hibbs 1987a; Hibbs 1987b; Keech 1995); many sociologists have simply abandoned the field and moved on—to political opportunity and culture (McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996; Goodwin and Jasper 2004).
