In the past decade, we have seen a proliferation of economic crises in the developing world. These crises have had disastrous effects on national economies as entire banking sectors collapsed, currencies depreciated and millions fell below the poverty line. At different points in history, economic crises have led to democratic breakdown or to democratic transition. These periods corresponded roughly with Samuel Huntington’s waves of democracy. However, the literature has insufficiently addressed how economic crises affect regime change in these third wave democracies. I argue that while financial crises may engender regime change in authoritarian countries, in third wave democracies, one will not see economic crisis generating a regime change but instead a regime shift. I define regime shift as a movement among alternatives within the democratic structure. For example, if the right is in power when an economic crisis hits, one may see left and far-left parties making substantial gains in the next election. In order to test this hypothesis, I will use multivariate analysis through employing the most similar systems case study methodology. I chose the three cases of Turkey, Poland and the Philippines to ensure sufficient geographic variation. In addition, these countries vary in terms of how their democratic transition took place (i.e. controlled from above vs. spurred from below). I believe this choice of cases is significant, for it refutes the argument that the regime shift phenomenon is region specific. The results of this study suggest that a robust correlation exists between economic crisis and regime shift. This analysis can strongly affirm two factors: first, third wave democracies are not collapsing in the wake of economic crises. Second, during economic crises, incumbents are typically rejected in favor of alternatives to the status quo. In Turkey, far right and Islamic parties made substantial gains during the three economic crises. In Poland, the Solidarity party was defeated during each economic crisis in favor of the former communist SLD. In the Philippines, the establishment presidential candidate was rejected in favor of the most anti-establishment candidate on the ticket. These findings will, I hope, make a contribution to the literatures on economic crises and democratic transitions. Most notably, it will show that the third wave democracies are not reverting back to authoritarianism when they hit rough periods. Instead, they are showing the first signs of democratic consolidation by holding their leaders accountable for policy failures. They are choosing from the systemic parties available, rather than rioting. This shows that they have faith in the democratic institutions of government to rectify their problems. For third wave democracies, this is a promising finding indeed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]