Organizing Democracy: How International Organizations Assist New Democracies
Paul Poast and Johannes Urpelainen
Abstract
Samuel Huntington labeled democratization “an important—perhaps the most important—global political development of the late twentieth century” and scholars have extensively studied the relationship between democratic transitions and membership in international organizations. However, the mechanisms underpinning this association remain unclear. Paul Poast and Johannes Urpelainen clarify these mechanisms by arguing that leaders in new democracies use, and often must create, international organizations to provide the public goods and technical expertise necessary to consolidate democratic rule. P ... More
Samuel Huntington labeled democratization “an important—perhaps the most important—global political development of the late twentieth century” and scholars have extensively studied the relationship between democratic transitions and membership in international organizations. However, the mechanisms underpinning this association remain unclear. Paul Poast and Johannes Urpelainen clarify these mechanisms by arguing that leaders in new democracies use, and often must create, international organizations to provide the public goods and technical expertise necessary to consolidate democratic rule. Poast and Urpelainen bring to bear a host of evidence showing that new democracies form international organizations and how these organizations support these states along the difficult path to consolidating their democratic institutions. From the application of rigorous statistical techniques to the exploration of the Baltic state’s accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Poast and Urpelainen provide a compelling account for how transitional states can use international institutions to organize democracy.
Keywords:
democratization,
democratic consolidation,
NATO expansion,
Baltic battalion,
international organizations
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2018 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226543345 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: September 2018 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226543512.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Paul Poast, author
University of Chicago
Johannes Urpelainen, author
More
Less
