Democratic Ceilings

Presenters: Aram Hur, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Missouri; Gerardo L. Munck, Professor of Political Science and International Relations, University of Southern California; Grigore Pop-Eleches, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University; Daniel Treisman, Professor of Political Science, UCLA
Respondent: Ricarda Hammer, WCED Postdoctoral Fellow
Moderator: Dan Slater, WCED Director

Following transitions to democracy in the 1980s and 1990s, many countries have ceased making democratic progress. They have failed to improve the quality of their democracy even after being democracies for several decades. They have hit a democratic ceiling. The collection of papers offer an alternative to the influential “erosion narrative” and draw attention to the distinct problem of democratic ceilings. The papers consider the evolution of democracy on a global scale and analyze in depth cases in East Asia, Latin America, and East-Central Europe. They consider various factors (economic development, nationalism, patrimonialism, and citizen attitudes) that determine why democratic progress has stalled. Jointly, they show that scholarship on democracy should treat the problem of democratic ceilings as a central problem in global politics.