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Democratic Transitions - Bottom-up transitions to democracy

5 important questions on Democratic Transitions - Bottom-up transitions to democracy

One of the most dramatic examples of a bottom-up transition to democracy occurred in East Germany in November 1989. The eventual collapse of Communism in East Germany had much to do with the election of Gorbachev in the Soviet Union. The two reform policies he implemented were:

Perestroika: or 'economic reconstructing', was a reform policy aimed at liberalizing and regenerating the Soviet economy
Glasnost: or 'openness', was a reform policy aimed at increasing political openness.

Collective action theory focuses on forms of mass action, or collective action, such as the protests in East Germany in 1989. Collective action refers to:

The pursuit of some objective by groups of individuals. Typically, the objective is some form of public good (which is non excludable and nonrivalrous). We can also think of democracy as a public good, it is non excludable and nonrivalrous.

The difficulty that groups of individuals have in providing public goods that all members of the group desire is known as the collective action, or free rider, problem, which refers to:

The fact that individual members of a group often have little incentive to contribute to the provision of a public good that will benefit all members of the group.

The size of protest at which an individual is willing to participate is referred to as:

A revolutionary threshold. As the size of a protest grows, it becomes harder for the state to identify and punish individuals for participating, so the costs of participation decline in rough proportion to the number of protesters.

The distribution of revolutionary thresholds in a society is crucial for determining whether a revolution occurs or not, as the slight shift in the revolutionary threshold of one individual can cause a revolutionary cascade:

When one person's participation triggers the participation of another, which triggers the participation of another, and so on.

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

Principles of Comparative Politics | 9781506318141 | William Roberts Clark, et al

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Democratic Transitions - Bottom-up transitions to democracy

5 important questions on Democratic Transitions - Bottom-up transitions to democracy

One of the most dramatic examples of a bottom-up transition to democracy occurred in East Germany in November 1989. The eventual collapse of Communism in East Germany had much to do with the election of Gorbachev in the Soviet Union. The two reform policies he implemented were:

Collective action theory focuses on forms of mass action, or collective action, such as the protests in East Germany in 1989. Collective action refers to:

The difficulty that groups of individuals have in providing public goods that all members of the group desire is known as the collective action, or free rider, problem, which refers to:

The size of protest at which an individual is willing to participate is referred to as:

The distribution of revolutionary thresholds in a society is crucial for determining whether a revolution occurs or not, as the slight shift in the revolutionary threshold of one individual can cause a revolutionary cascade:

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