A Theory of Minimalist Democracy

NBER Working Paper No. 20552

Issued in October 2014

NBER Program(s):Development Economics, Political Economy



A majority of the world democracies are far from the benchmark of representative democracy. This paper presents a model of political transitions based on a minimalist conception of the democratic state, i.e. a form of government solely characterized by competitive elections. We show that the model can produce dynamics of transition into democracy without requiring any role for redistribution or representation of voters, but solely based on interactions among the ruling elites. This allows the model to match several relevant stylized facts concerning the organization of new and consolidating democracies, weakly institutionalized countries, and hybrid regimes.

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w20552

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