On Missed Chances and Opportunities Taken: When do International Actors Effectually Use Critical Junctures to Encourage Pro-Democratic Regime Change From the Outside?

In this paper, I seek to systematically investigate the conditions under which critical junctures result in pro-democratic regime-type change, and to determine when and with what effect external actors engage in democracy assistance. To answer these questions, it is important to construct the ‘universe’ of cases including both critical junctures that lead to democratic change and those that did not. Only if we include the full range of possible outcomes into the analysis, we can learn if external actors seize their opportunities and whether their engagement has a supporting effect on pro-democratic regime-type change, or not. This study will proceed in two steps. First, I will build an event-based dataset of critical junctures since 1945 worldwide based on a survey among experts specialized in political transition in all five world regions, as grouped by the United Nations (Africa, Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe, Latin America-Caribbean, Western Europe-Northern America including Australia and New Zealand). Second, I will test hypotheses derived from recently built theories of the drivers behind international democracy promotion on this new dataset. In essence, this study will thus allow determining the impact of international democracy assistance in times of political transition.