On democratic consolidation in the third wawe -A cross country investigation

Abstract This thesis evaluates the empirical support for some of the most influential theories within the literature on democratic consolidation and applies them to thethird wave of democracy. In our population, which consists of 85 countries thatexperienced a transition to democracy between the years 1974 and 1995, there exists a large divergence in the outcome of the consolidation process. By using a multiple regression analysis, we seek to find the structural variables that can account for these differences. Our main findings are that two specific variables have been especially important within our population. Besides from gaining empirical importance in our main regression analyses, they have also survived several complementary tests. This has proven that countries with a higher degree of economic freedom and those who have adopted a proportional electoral system, to a significant degree have succeeded better in the consolidation process, than those with a lower level of economic freedom and/or countries with a plurality/majority electoral system