ABSTRACT
Modernization theory, the claim that socio-economic development advances democracy, is one of the most influential propositions in empirical democratization theory. It has a venerable pedigree, going back to the work of the nineteenth-century founders of modern social science. However, it has also consistently been criticized and challenged. Older criticisms mainly focused on ways in which modernization processes played out differently in different social contexts; more recent debates have centred on the mechanisms driving the relationship and on discussing how robust the association is and whether it is conditional on other factors. This chapter introduces the theory in its different variants and discusses both older and more recent criticisms. We show that while linear versions of modernization theory are not borne out by the evidence, so-called conditional modernization theory has emerged as a new fix point in recent debates.
