More interesting is the relationship between dictatorships and demography, but, again, aside from a little theorizing and a few statistical tests I believe the authors do little to shed much light on why different regimes affect demography differently. They begin to flesh out an argument the crux of which revolves around the ability of democratic polities to "commit" to providing social welfare over the long run, but this seems to run counter to their initial dismissal earlier in the book of the Neo-Institutional economics claim put forth by Douglass North, among others, as to the importance of institutions in "binding the hands of the sovereign."

Finally, their results do show that democracies tend to survive in wealthy states, in essence becoming "unkillable" after a certain level of wealth is reached. They do little to really explain why this is, but the result gives credence to Lipset's thesis that devolpment, at the very least, helps sustain democracies.

Overall I liked to book and would reccommend it as an assigned book in a comparative politics/political economy class.


Monumental Work!!!   April 24, 2001
 2 out of 8 found this review helpful

Too many conjectures and too many theories have been addressed concerning the relationship between polities and material well-being in the world. But they have been raised without a proper test of them, without empirics. This book completely cleans all kinds of intellectual garbages, clarifies the existing arguments, and above all provides a series of the sohpisticated tests. Adam Przeworski and his comrades did a marvelous job.