Regional Agreements to Defend Democracy: Locking in Democratic Gains?

In the last twenty years, many regional intergovernmental organizations have adopted rules requiring that all member-states be democracies, and specifying certain penalties that are to be imposed on any state that undergoes a democratic reversal. These rules - occasionally called democracy clauses - have recently received increased attention from political scientists. In keeping with this year's theme of "Political Authority in Transition," this paper asks whether rules that transfer some authority over domestic politics to international organizations, like the Inter-American Democratic Charter, are in fact constraining the ability of domestic political actors to overthrow or undermine unconsolidated democratic regimes. Building on models predicting coup risk, this paper shows that from 1991- 2008 democracy clauses were correlated with a decrease of almost 25% in the likelihood that a state would experience a coup in any given coup-year, holding other factors constant. This finding contributes to our understanding of the international influences on democratic consolidation, and on the efficacy of international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]