Abstract

This paper aims to provide a snapshot of how democracy and democratization have been conceptualized and understood in comparative politics through two content areas. First, with a succinct summary of the various approaches which scholars have taken to define and measure democracy, light is shed on the difficulty in guarding the minimalist components of democracy from the risks of “definitional gerrymandering” and “epistemological anarchism.” Second, with a brief overview of the existing studies around the various forms of modernization theory and their empirical findings, attention is called to the continuous refinement of methodological design to account for potential contextual and local nuances and the necessity of applying robustness and causality checks to validate statistical results. I seek to mention the classics of past political philosophers and thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, Montesquieu, the Federalists, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill and ensure a fair and informative representation of the works of more contemporary scholars such as Robert Dahl, Adam Przeworski, and Carles Boix, and synthesize the notoriously complex theoretical and empirical discussions around the so-called “D-word.” I also expect to demonstrate how instinctual and descriptive discussions on democratization have transformed toward a more formal and econometrical direction.

Keywords: Democracy, Democratization, Modernization