From Afghanistan to Sierra Leone, the international community is promoting democratic norms and institutions. It is for this reason that the investigation of general and specific effects of authoritarian legacies has been identified as a “pressing challenge for political science.” Research on this institutional overhang is timely, for surviving institutions have received scant attention in the literature. Moreover, while scholars have written widely on how to make democracy work in changing societies, they have said relatively little about the contribution of law to this endeavor. By taking legal norms and institutions seriously, this book contributes new patterns, significant connections, and improved interpretations to the theory of democracy.

The book constructs the foundations for a theory of democracy that revolves around rules of law. It sheds light on the neglected relationship between path dependence and the law. By showing how, and when, legal norms and institutions served as historical causes to contemporary dictatorship and democracy, the book advances unexpected insights about the ever more relevant linkages between law and politics in the international system. As such, the book also contributes to the emerging debate over the legacies of liberalism.

QUESTIONS

This book is built around an attempt to answer two central questions: How do legal norms and institutions evolve in response to individual incentives, strategies, and choices; and how, once established, do they influence the responses of individuals to large processes, especially democratization? The central theme is the importance of law in modern politics.