Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. This chapter explains the to understand these divergent outcomes, that one seek to examine the ways that states transition to democracy and the impact this has on the success of democracy. Through an analysis of transition type and the equality of competition that emerges from negotiations between incumbents and elites, we describe systematic patterns of transitional legacies and derive generalizable conclusions from the modes of transition on the success of democracy. The chapter also discusses the theoretical assumptions that are derived from the transition literature and our empirical observations. It also deals with the research design and dataset, including decision rules on coding cases and sources for obtaining democratic quality and longevity ratings, and quantitatively testing the hypotheses deduced from our theory in explaining the success rate of democratic transitions.