Is the Third Wave Over?

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Essential to tracking the progress of democracy and understanding both its causes and its consequences is a high degree of conceptual clarity about the term “democracy.” Unfortunately, what prevails instead in the burgeoning empirical and theoretical literature on democracy is conceptual confusion and disarray so serious that David Collier and Steven Levitsky have identified more than 550 “subtypes” of democracy. 2 Some of these nominal subtypes merely identify specific institutional features or types of full democracy, but many denote “diminished” forms of democracy that overlap with one another in a variety of ways. Fortunately, most conceptions of democracy today (in contrast with the 1960s and 1970s, for example) do converge in defining democracy as a system of political authority, separate from any social and economic features. Where conceptions still diverge fundamentally (but not always very explicitly) is in the range and extent of political attributes encompassed by democracy.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: