Publication

The authors analyze Samuel Huntington’s thesis of democratic waves and look at the criticism expressed by different scholars. By using a set of different measures of democracy, they find substantial support for Huntington’s wave thesis and little support for the position of his critics who argue that there are no democratic waves. The authors find clear identifiable trends in the evolution of democratic governance throughout the world during the past century that correspond roughly to the waves and reverse-waves identified by Huntington.