Since 1974, democracy has become an increasingly ubiquitous form of government. In the words of one scholar, “Democracy seems to have scored an historic victory over alternative forms of government” (Held 1993: 13). What has accounted for the rise of democracy and its prospects for continuation has become the focus of a large scholarly community. Despite the widespread interest in these issues, how international factors shape these processes has not received “sufficient attention” from these scholars (Hall 1993: 279).

The purpose of this book has been to investigate one aspect of the international influence on democratization: the effect of regional organizations. Through theorizing about causal processes, as well as testing the link between regional IOs and democracy, I attempted to bring a systematic approach to the investigation of external–internal linkages. Such an effort is essential not only for political science theory and research, but policymakers as well.

The argument

In Chapter 2, I presented several causal processes linking membership in and the joining of regional organizations to both democratic transitions and democratic endurance. The successes of regional institutions arise from their ability to create both positive and negative incentives for domestic actors. A regional organization's ability to either promote or protect democracy grows out of its capacity to influence the cost–benefit calculations as well as the perceptions of societal actors, often at the behest of these same domestic actors.

With regard to democratic transitions, regional organizations can provide a low-cost forum for neighboring democracies to pressure non-democracies to liberalize.