Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman end their review with a clearly formulated and weighty question: In what ways do democratic transitions ultimately matter? At its heart, Authoritarianism and the Elite Origins of Democracy makes the claim that not all democratic transitions are the same. Most fundamentally, some dictatorships transition into elite-biased democracies, those in which political and economic elites from the outgoing authoritarian regime coordinated to impose a constitutional framework for democratic change that benefits them. Others are popular democracies, those that arise when external circumstances catch incumbent authoritarian elites off guard, and, under duress, they concede institutional control and rulemaking to a coalition of outsider economic elites—those elites who are shut out of power and influence under authoritarianism—and the masses. This distinction has critical consequences for polities’ basic architecture, citizen rights, the nature and inclusivity of representation, the size of government, social justice, and egalitarianism.

As Haggard and Kaufman point out, only a minority of democracies today—just under 30%—operate with constitutions penned by a former authoritarian regime. However, this masks a key point that underscores the importance of distinguishing elite-biased democracies: over the last two centuries, authoritarian constitutions guided almost two-thirds of democratic transitions. This single variable, of course, cannot capture all the salient variation in the balance of power between outgoing authoritarians and the opposition during a transition. Moreover, not all new democracies are equally constrained by their authoritarian past. Furthermore, a host of countries, such as Canada and India, gained independence as democracies and, therefore, are not strictly elite biased in our framework—despite having antidemocratic colonial legacies that we discuss in Chapter 8.

What explains why and when elite-biased democracies shift to become more popular in nature? We agree with Dictators and Democrats that bargains forged between outgoing authoritarians and the opposition create path dependence. Outgoing authoritarians rely on this hysteresis to safeguard their rights and interests under elected government. However, we also argue that this dependence can decay (see Chapters 5, 6, and 7). Exogenous shocks, in the form of economic crises, trade shocks, or wars, can overturn elite biases written into a democracy’s social contract. This tends to occur within predictable windows: Constitutions often impose a half-life on the political privileges and immunities enjoyed by the former authoritarian old guard that mirrors their own mortality and fear of persecution and revenge.

We also concede that constitutions are endogenous—to a degree—to the balance of power. However, as we show empirically in Chapters 4 and 5, this is not entirely so. Even after controlling for typical measures of balance of power during transitions, democracies that inherit elite-biased constitutions are systematically different from “popular” democracies. This is because constitutions reflect not only the political and economic power of their authors, but also the ability of elites to coordinate with one another on their preferred political outcomes. Moreover, once penned, constitutions are sticky for the many reasons we outline in Chapter 3—shaping future political dynamics and outcomes, rather than simply reflecting contemporaneous preferences.

Dictators and Democrats, as well as our own book, should disrupt the conversation on the causes and consequences of democratization. While scholars should continue to theorize and operationalize the importance of elites versus the masses in democratic change, they should no longer debate whether it makes sense to conceive of elites per se as a unified actor. Furthermore, they should not be blind to systematic evidence that the authoritarian past continues to matter long after democratization. Indeed, while scholars should continue to examine fine gradations of democratic practice, representation, inclusiveness, and egalitarianism, they should also consider turning to both Dictators and Democrats and Authoritarianism and the Elite Origins of Democracy to aid in understanding the reasons behind the growing trend in democratic erosion.

Scholars will—and rightly should—continue to debate the role of elites and the masses in democratization as well as underlying socioeconomic factors. We hope that when they do so, they consider the new facts being unearthed rapidly in this growing literature.