Charles Kurzman

Waves of democratization

The term, “waves of democratization,” popularized by Huntington (1991), can be conceptualized in at least three ways: as rises in the global level of democracy, as periods of positive net transitions to democracy, and as linked sets of transitions to democracy. Each of these approaches to the concept carries distinct theoretical implications and generates somewhat different historical patterns. The three approaches are examined using four cross-national, time-series operationalizations of democracy.

Democracy's Effect on Economic Growth: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis, 1951-1980*

The relationship between democracy and economic growth has concerned social scientists since the 17th century, but recent democracy movements make this question especially important today. Do poor countries face a cruel trade-off between democracy and growth? Do democracy and growth go together as a “win-win” proposition? Or is democracy irrelevant to growth? Using pooled annual time-series data from 1951–1980 for 106 countries, including 88 non-core countries, we explore long-term and short-term direct and indirect effects of democracy on growth. Little or no direct effect emerges, but positive indirect effects appear via two mechanisms: a marginally significant effect via investment and a robust effect via government expenditure. Democracy also has a robust non-linear effect on economic growth via social unrest, inhibiting growth under non-democratic regimes and furthering it in highly democratic ones. Combining these findings, we conclude that democracy does not significantly hamper economic growth, and under many circumstances slightly boosts it.

Can Understanding Undermine Explanation? The Confused Experience of Revolution

This article makes six points, using evidence from the Iranian Revolution of 1979: (1) Causal mechanisms, indeed all explanations, imply certain inner states on the part of individuals. (2) The experience of revolution is dominated by confusion. (3) People involved in revolutions act largely in response to their best guesses about how others are going to act. (4) These guesses and responses can shift swiftly and dramatically, in ways that participants and observers cannot predict. (5) Explanation involves retroactive prediction: it implies that if we had recognized causal factors A, B, or C at the time, we would have expected some ensuing development. (6) To the extent that revolutionary experience is characterized by confusion, then understanding this experience may disconfirm all explanation.

Intellectuals and Democratization, 1905-1912 and 1989-1996

This article bridges the gap in studies of the social bases of democratization between qualitative studies focused on social groups and quantitative studies focused on national characteristics. Qualitative historical evidence suggests the importance of classes—in particular, the emerging class of intellectuals—in the wave of democratizations in the decade before World War I. Quantitative cross‐national data on a more recent wave of democratizations, from 1989 to 1996, confirm these findings. Models using direct maximum‐likelihood estimation find that the ratio of adults with higher education has a significant positive effect on change in democracy levels, as measured by two longitudinal scales (Polity IV and Polyarchy). Proxies for the working class and the middle class—candidates proposed in previous studies as the social basis of democratization—also have significant effects.

Dilemmas of Electoral Clientelism: Taiwan, 1993

For many years, studies of electoral clientelism regarded clients as the captive votes of patrons. In recent years, this conventional wisdom has come under challenge, as scholars have come to recognize the widespread noncompliance of clients. This article uses the case of the 1993 Taiwan election to offer the first ever systematic data on noncompliance. Documents from the ruling Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) campaign office in one Taiwanese district, combined with district electoral results, demonstrate considerable leakage in this instance of clientelistic mobilization: at least 45 percent of voters who sold their votes to the Kuomintang did not, in fact, vote for the Kuomintangs candidate. This article argues that clientelistic mobilization faced at least four serious obstacles, including (1) broker scarcity, (2) factionalism, (3) embezzlement, and (4) financial limitations. These obstacles prevented the Kuomintang from making full use of its broker organizations, even as it devoted extensive economic and political resources and personnel to the election.

For Export Only: Diffusion Professionals and Population Policy

Export-only diffusion occurs when innovators do not adopt an innovation themselves, but rather promote it to others for adoption. Potential adopters do not take their cues from early adopters, but rather from diffusion professionals who make it their job to spread a practice or institution. The global spread of national-level, population-control policies during the Cold War is one such instance: developed and promoted by wealthy countries that did not themselves adopt such policies, they came to be widespread among poorer countries, thanks in large part to the mobilization of diffusion professionals. This article offers an analytical account of this diffusion, as well as an event-history analysis of 163 countries over the period 1950–1990 demonstrating the importance of linkages between policy adopters and the non-adopting institutions of diffusion professionals.

A Feminist Generation in Iran

Numerous observers have noted that a feminist generation of educated young women appears to be emerging in Iran, despite the anti-feminist discourse of the Iranian government. Evidence from three surveys conducted in 2000–2003 confirms and complicates these observations. Educated young women are significantly more likely to espouse feminist attitudes of various sorts than other Iranians, including educated young men. In addition, educated young women are significantly more likely to work outside the home, marry later, give birth later, have fewer children, and have more egalitarian marriages than other Iranian women. However, surprising proportions of older Iranians also espouse feminist attitudes, and a majority of respondents in one nationally representative sample of urban Iranians identify themselves as proponents of womens rights.

The Arab Spring: Ideals of the Iranian Green Movement, Methods of the Iranian Revolution

Which Iranian uprising does the Arab Spring bring to mind? The Green Movement of 2009, which challenged the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran, or the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which brought the Islamic Republic to power?

Bin Laden and Other Thoroughly Modern Muslims

Osama bin Laden may have operated from a cave in one of the least-developed countries in the world, but his radical Islamic movement is thoroughly modern. In many ways, radical Islamists are a mirror image of Islamic liberals, whose peaceful struggle to establish democracy is actually more popular.

The Qum Protests and the Coming of the Iranian Revolution, 1975 and 1978

In June 1975 and January 1978, seminary students in the shrine city of Qum, Iran, staged public protests against the regime of Shah Muhammad Riza Pahlavi. In both instances security forces forcibly suppressed the protests. Yet the first incident generated almost no public outcry, while the second incident echoed throughout Iran and quickly became a rallying point for revolutionary mobilization. What was different about Iran in mid-1975 and early 1978 that might account for these different reactions? This article examines three widely credited explanations: economic downturn, widening political opportunity, and organizational mobilization of the opposition. The examination of economic and political explanations uncovered little evidence of significant differences between the two time periods; organizational explanations, by contrast, accounted for significant shifts in 1977 among the moderate and Islamist opposition, with the Islamist opposition in particular exhibiting a sense of optimism and efficacy in the weeks before January 1978. This changed self-perception appears to be the most likely explanation for the wave of protest that followed the suppression of the Qum protest of January 1978.