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Mass mobilization (MM) is an important driver of political change. While some citizens organize in favor of more democratic institutions, others take to the streets to support an authoritarian status quo. This article introduces measures of pro-democratic and pro-autocratic MM using expert assessments for 179 polities from 1900–2021. The data allow us to trace patterns in MM over time, across regions and regime types. We use this new data to systematically analyze the relationship between both types of mobilization and regime change. We confirm the findings of the literature on contentious democratic politics, and our analysis of autocratic mobilization allows us to make sense of the controversy in the literature on "bad actors" in civil society. We show that MM in favor of autocracy negatively affects democracy, making a case for specifying the goals of the actors involved in contentious politics to more precisely understand their impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The third wave of democratization has given way to a reverse wave of autocratization. A critical question is what can be done to prevent democratic breakdowns and make democracy endure. A large body of historical-narrative and small-N comparative scholarship has suggested that an active mobilized civil society and institutionalized political parties can be mobilized to protect democracy from authoritarian takeovers. We provide the first rigorous set of empirical analyses to test this argument using data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project for the period from 1900 to 2010. We find that both exert a robust, independent, and substantial effect on the survival of democracies. These findings have important policy implications for the international community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We theorize that three distinct structures of democratic constraint explain why more democratic dyads do not engage in military conflict with each other. We build on earlier theories that focused on electoral and horizontal accountability. We add a new dimension—the social accountability provided by an active civil society. Using several new measures from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) data set, we stringently test these explanations. We find social accountability to be the strongest and most consistent predictor of nonbelligerence in dyads, that horizontal accountability is still important, but that the independent role of electoral accountability has been somewhat overstated. However, we do find that social and electoral accountability work strongly together, to make for an even greater effect. The finding is robust to a range of specifications and in the face of controls for contending theories that challenge the democratic peace (e.g., the capitalist and territorial peace theories). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including income disparity in new democracies in Europe, inequality in Poland after 1989, and civil socities in autocratic regimes.

This article argues that the strength of civil society at the point of extrication from communism is a powerful predictor of how “liberal democratic” post-communist regimes become. This is based on the impact that an engaged civil society has on the reconfiguration of post-communist elites and the degree to which the model of accumulation permits concentrat on of resources in the hands of previous elites. In cases where civil society was engaged a: the moment of extrication, the elite were disposed to a more liberal model of capitalism which afforded greater social welfare protection. Where civil society was weaker, the elite were able to convert political power into concentrated control of economic assets and a more predatory and inegalitarian model of political capitalism emerged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconsiders the work of Barrington Moore and his critics on the historical emergence of democracy in the light of post-communist democratization. What are we to make of a region which violates Moore's dictum – “No bourgeoisie, no democracy”? Using the tools of comparative historical analysis, it makes sense of how democracy emerged in the region by developing a theory which both explains why this was possible and what social actors were essential to this outcome. With attention to patterns of social development in the region, the politics of elite alliance in the final phase of communism, the strength of civil society at extrication, and the role of the international system, it explains differences in regime outcomes across the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Eastern Europe continues to be defined and redefined not just by the actual patterns of socio-economic and political reproduction of the distant and proximate regimes governing the region but also through the perceptions of such legacies as generating fundamental similarities. Such perceived similarities, whether or not closely mapped on the objective parallels among countries in Eastern Europe, facilitate intra-region diffusion that results in (further) spatio-temporal socio-economic and political similarities specific to the region. To illustrate this relationship between precommunist and communist legacies, intra-region diffusion, and the production of Eastern Europe, the article examines Slovakia’s diffusion entrepreneurship in the wave of electoral breakthroughs in Eastern Europe in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This article contributes to the literatures on Eastern Europe and comparative democratization in two main ways. First, it adds to the work on the impact of spatio-temporal dependence on transition outcomes, such as democratization, in Eastern Europe. Second, by doing so, the article also documents the impact of an understudied set of democracy promoters—the Eastern European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an original dataset that covers the period from 1951 to 1995, we consider the enduring effects of Western overseas colonialism on the democratic survival of postcolonial democracies. We treat colonialism as a holistic phenomenon and differentiate the relative effects of its legacies with regard to the level of economic development, social fragmentation, and the relationship between the state and civil society. We find that Western overseas colonialism, a factor often overlooked in recent large- n studies, continues to have an effect on the survival of democratic regimes. We further find that the legacy of specific colonial powers has an important effect on survival as well. Unlike previous studies, we find that former Spanish colonies outperform British colonies when colonialism is conceptualized holistically. However, when we break colonial legacy into separate components (development, social fragmentation, and the relationship between the state and civil society), we find that the advantages former British colonies enjoy are attributable to the legacy of the state/civil society relationship. Moreover, we show that at least in the case of former British colonies, time spent under colonial rule is positively associated with democratic survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines what has happened to civil society in Poland and other post-communist states since the collapse of communist states. Four factors in the weakening of civil society; Demobilization of insurgent civil society; Decapitation through success; Post-totalitarianism; Social transformation.