TY - BOOK ID - 25095463 TI - Democracy and redistribution PY - 2003 SN - 9780521532679 9780521825603 0521825601 0521532671 9780511804960 1316283135 0511804962 PB - Cambridge Cambridge University Press DB - UniCat KW - Sociological theory building KW - Political systems KW - Development, Political KW - Political development. KW - Democratization KW - Political development KW - Economic development KW - Democratization. KW - Economic development. KW - #SBIB:041.AANKOOP KW - #SBIB:324H71 KW - Development, Economic KW - Economic growth KW - Growth, Economic KW - Democratic consolidation KW - Democratic transition KW - Politieke verandering: modernisatie, democratisering, regional development KW - Economic policy KW - Economics KW - Statics and dynamics (Social sciences) KW - Development economics KW - Resource curse KW - Political science KW - New democracies UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:25095463 AB - When do countries democratize? What facilitates the survival of authoritarian regimes? What determines the occurrence of revolutions, often leading to left-wing dictatorships, such as the Soviet regime? Although a large literature has developed since Aristotle through contemporary political science to answer these questions, we still lack a convincing understanding of the process of political development. Employing analytical tools borrowed from game theory, Carles Boix offers a complete theory of political transitions, in which political regimes ultimately hinge on the nature of economic assets, their distribution among individuals, and the balance of power among different social groups. Backed up by detailed historical work and extensive statistical analysis that goes back to the mid-nineteenth century, this 2003 book explains why democracy emerged in classical Athens. It also discusses the early triumph of democracy in both nineteenth-century agrarian Norway, Switzerland and northeastern America and the failure in countries with a powerful landowning class. ER -