Nancy Bermeo

Princeton University | PU · Department of Politics

This article reflects on whether the erosion of democracy in the contemporary United States can be halted. Using the cases and conclusions from McCoy and Somer’s eleven country collective project, it argues that democracy’s decline is not inevitable. A case for cautious optimism emerges from analyzing the coalitions around democracy’s disassemblers...

Democratic backsliding (meaning the state-led debilitation or elimination of the political institutions sustaining an existing democracy) has changed dramatically since the Cold War. Open-ended coups d’état, executive coups, and blatant election-day vote fraud are declining while promissory coups, executive aggrandizement and strategic electoral ma...

The financial crisis that erupted on Wall Street in 2008 quickly cascaded throughout much of the advanced industrial world. Facing the specter of another Great Depression, policymakers across the globe responded in sharply different ways to avert an economic collapse. Why did the response to the crisis—and its impact on individual countries—vary so...

Why do actors in transitional governments choose to hold fair elections when so many other options are available? The answer to this question is key to understanding an essential element of democracy’s institutional collage. This essay explores the choice of fair elections through the comparison of two episodes in Portuguese history: the elections...

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How do the legacies of armed conflict affect new democracies? This chapter focuses on a small part of this larger question. It examines an intriguing puzzle that emerges from the statistical analysis of the entire set of new electoral democracies emerging between 1946 and 2001. Briefly put, the puzzle is this: Democracies that emerge during or afte...

Inequalities seem ubiquitous, despite the spread of electoral democracy and what were, until recently, positive rates of economic growth. These seemingly mismatched trends should not surprise us. The advance of democracy entails a decrease in political inequality but does not guarantee decreases in inequalities of other sorts. Economic (and other)...

Whether we assess the evidence from the essays in this book or from examples in the world around us, we are forced to conclude that democracy is not exportable. Export involves crafting a product in one location, finding a buyer willing to pay for it in another location, and conveying it intact. Democracy simply does not fit the metaphor. First, de...

The literature on democracy suggests that new democracies should have difficulty emerging during war or in the aftermath of armed struggle, yet Portugal's current democracy emerged simultaneously with the end of the nation's unsuccessful war in Africa. This article addresses the reasons and argues that democracy triumphed not simply in spite of the...

In 1969, in "Six Books in Search of a Subject or Does Federalism Exist and Does It Matter," William Riker reached rather bleak conclusions concerning scholarship about federalism. This review looks at recent books on federalism to see if Riker's verdict still applies. These books show that federalism indeed exists, so the aim is to evaluate current...

FEDERALISM AND TERRITORIAL CLEAVAGES Edited by Ugo M. Amoretti and Nancy Bermeo Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. xiv, 498pp, US$55.00 cloth (ISBN 0-8018-7408-4)Ugo M. Amoretti's original question was whether regional cleavages in Italy-always a hot issue in the electoral politics of the peninsula-would be better accommodated by fede...

In much of the political economy literature, social democratic governments are assumed to defend the interests of labor. The main thrust of this article is that labor is divided into those with secure employment (insiders) and those without (outsiders). I argue that the goals of social democratic parties are often best served by pursuing policies t...

Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650–2000. By Charles Tilly. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 320p. $60.00 cloth, $22.00 paper. Charles Tilly's study of democracy and contention is itself highly contentious and deservedly so. After reading and writing social and political history for over five decades, its author is well positioned t...

In modern politics, cabinet ministers are major actors in the arena of power as they occupy a strategic locus of command from which vital, authoritative decisions flow continuously. Who are these uppermost policy-makers? What are their background characteristics and credentials? How are they selected and which career paths do they travel in their a...

Ministerial elites in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal have changed dramatically since these states began their slow march to democracy in the 19th century. Though changes have not homogenized the ministerial elites of Europe's South, each country has responded to the pressures of modernization, democratization and Europeanization with an increase...

A new research project suggests that federalism enhances the ability of regimes to accommodate territorially based minorities.Federal systems,except when imposed by an outside power,significantly help to preserve the peace.

The movement for European integration has yielded a European Union of fifteen states with a unified monetary system that will eventually embrace over 370 million people. If current trends continue, an average of one in ten of these people will be unemployed. Not surprisingly, the European public ranks joblessness among its primary political concern...

This concluding essay explains why unemployed southern Europeans have not become involved in extremist or xenophobic political movements despite relatively weak welfare states and rising levels of immigration. Drawing on material from the collection's essays and from the general social science literature on Southern Europe, the article concludes th...

This essay examines the moderation argument: transitions to democracy are threatened if radical forces push their demands too long or too hard. Drawing on evidence from Iberia, South America, and Asia, it illustrates when moderation is required and when it is not. Conditions for democratization hinge less on the absence or existence of radicalism t...

This article presents a model for successful dual transitions derived from an analysis of the Spanish experience of 1977–1986. I argue that the successful implementation of structural adjustment programs depends on two factors: one, a reform sequence that delays deepened structural adjustment until after the consolidation of democracy seems assured...

This article investigates the cultural and behavioral legacies of dictatorship. It argues that the experience of dictatorship can lead to a process of political learning in which social actors reevaluate their past perspectives on the relative merits of democracy. It begins by explaining what political learning is, using examples from Europe and La...

1. The first reference is from an interview with Salazar in the Deutsche National und Soldatenzeitung 15 November 1963 as recorded in Crollen 1973: 122. The second quotation is from Crollen 1973: 122. 2. Albano de Sousa was typical of many of the early industrialists who supported Salazar and expressed these protectionist principles vividly when he...

Fair elections are a key dimension of regime type. Why do actors in transitional governments choose to hold fair elections when so many other options are available? History has shown us that elections can be fixed, restricted, delayed or cancelled altogether. Why power-holders would choose to risk devolving power to the winners of a fair, and there...

Abstract will be provided by author.

Obra en que se estudian las razones por las que diversas naciones europeas del siglo XIX tuvieron éxito o fracasaron en el desarrollo de democracias duraderas; también se establecen relaciones entre el desarrollo de la democracia con la participación de la sociedad civil nacional que la sustenta.