Editing Democratization (section)

=== Sequencing and causality ===
Scholars have discussed whether the order in which things happen helps or hinders the process of democratization. An early discussion occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. Dankwart Rustow argued that "'the most effective sequence' is the pursuit of national unity, government authority, and political equality, in that order."<ref name="Samuel P. Huntington 1987, p. 19">Samuel P. Huntington, "The Goals of Development," pp. 3–32, in Myron Weiner and Samuel Huntington (eds.), ''Understanding Political Development''. Boston: Little Brown, 1987, p. 19.</ref> Eric Nordlinger and Samuel Huntington stressed "the importance of developing effective governmental institutions before the emergence of mass participation in politics."<ref name="Samuel P. Huntington 1987, p. 19"/> Robert Dahl, in ''Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition'' (1971), held that the "commonest sequence among the older and more stable polyarchies has been some approximation of the ... path [in which] competitive politics preceded expansion in participation."<ref>Dahl, Robert A. (1971). ''Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition''. New Haven: Yale University Press, p. 36.</ref>

In the 2010s, the discussion focused on the impact of the sequencing between state building and democratization. [[Francis Fukuyama]], in [[Political Order and Political Decay]] (2014), echoes Huntington's "state-first" argument and holds that those "countries in which democracy preceded modern state-building have had much greater problems achieving high-quality governance."<ref>Fukuyama, Francis. ''Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalisation of Democracy''. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2014, p 30.</ref> This view has been supported by [[Sheri Berman]], who offers a sweeping overview of European history and concludes that "sequencing matters" and that "without strong states...liberal democracy is difficult if not impossible to achieve."
<ref>Berman, Sheri, ''Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day''. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 394.</ref>

However, this state-first thesis has been challenged. Relying on a comparison of Denmark and Greece, and quantitative research on 180 countries across 1789–2019, Haakon Gjerløw, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Tore Wig, and Matthew C. Wilson, in ''One Road to Riches?'' (2022), "find little evidence to support the stateness-first argument."<ref>Gjerløw, H., Knutsen, C., Wig, T., & Wilson, M. (2022). ''One Road to Riches?: How State Building and Democratization Affect Economic Development''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. i.</ref> Based on a comparison of European and Latin American countries, [[Sebastián Mazzuca]] and Gerardo Munck, in ''A Middle-Quality Institutional Trap'' (2021), argue that counter to the state-first thesis, the "starting point of political developments is less important than whether the State–democracy relationship is a virtuous cycle, triggering causal mechanisms that reinforce each."<ref>Sebastián Mazzuca and Gerardo Munck (2021). ''A Middle-Quality Institutional Trap: Democracy and State Capacity in Latin America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. i.</ref>

In sequences of democratization for many countries, Morrison et al. found elections as the most frequent first element of the sequence of democratization but found this ordering does not necessarily predict successful democratization.<ref>[http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4494230 Morrison, Kelly and Lundstedt, Martin and Sato, Yuko and Boese, Vanessa A. and Markström, Klas and Lindberg, Staffan I., Chains in Episodes of Democratization (June 28, 2023). V-Dem Working Paper No. 2023:141]</ref>

The [[democratic peace theory]] claims that democracy causes peace, while the [[territorial peace theory]] claims that peace causes democracy.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gibler |first1=Douglas M. |last2=Miller |first2=Steven V. |editor1-last=McLaughlin |editor1-first=Sara |editor2-last=Vasquez |editor2-first=John A. |title=What do we know about War? |date=2021 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |pages=158–170 |edition=3 |chapter=The Territorial Peace: Current and Future Research}}</ref>