ABSTRACT
The worldwide resurgence of democracy after the Cold War has focused attention to a greater degree on the role of international/external/foreign factors and actors in regime changes. Thus, several new studies that analyse the international aspect of the process of democratization in new democracies have appeared in the last decade. Although fresh interest in the international dimension of regime change has arisen, literature on regime change has historically been domestic-oriented and has thus paid little attention to non-domestic factors (Pridham 1995a). Gourevitch has indicated this reality, stating that ‘students of comparative politics treat domestic structure too much as an independent variable, underplaying the extent to which it and the international system are parts of an interactive system’ (1978: 900). Scholte (1993: 11-18) has described this situation as ‘the underdevelopment’ of international studies of social and political change. As Grugel contended ‘the home of democratization studies has traditionally been comparative politics’ (2003: 258). Studies of democratization have mainly taken place within the parameters of domestic politics and ‘the result has been a marginalization of international variables as key explanatory factors, in favour of domestic variables’ (Cavatorta 2005: 548). This fact is very clear when looking at the famous volume Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, edited by O’Donnell, Schmitter and Whitehead. One of the ‘firmest conclusions’ they reached was that ‘transitions from authoritarian rule and immediate prospects for political democracy were largely to be explained in terms of national forces and calculations; external actors tended to play an indirect and usually marginal role’ (O’Donnell et al. 1986: 5).
