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Dictators and Democrats: Masses, Elites and Regime Change . By Stephan Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman . Princeton : Princeton University Press , 2016. xxii, 396 pp. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Figures. Tables. $32.95, paper.
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Dictators and Democrats will certainly take its place among the most significant, broad-scale studies of political change in the contemporary world. Itￂ has both breadth and depth. It targets understanding patterns that have been posited by major academic studies and impressively creates methodologies to test their validity. That said, there is a reason that many scholars have dodged these sweeping and complex challenges. It is a task of immense proportions. Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman manage by meticulously measuring their language and adhering diligently to the social scientist's caution that empirical studies demand. Their analysis on balance reflects the uneven, inconsistent, twisted nature of politics one finds in the diverse political world of the twenty-first century. They do not allow themselves to extend their propositions beyond what is evidenced.
The authors set out to address both the major pre-theories in empirical political science and to build out their thinking with numerous case studies drawn from area studies and regional expertise. The volume will be enthusiastically embraced by scholars already immersed in the literature of global data sets and familiar with the dialogue of controversies related to those methodologies. It takes the empirical data available, massages that data to reposition the conceptual frontier, including modifying models we are currently using. It employs both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Itￂ labors to combine these research techniques and often "pools" the two primary data sets used (CGV and Polity).
To accomplish these objectives that they set, they press their reasoning to the forward boundaries of the scholarly work on systemic change. Both in a substantive and a methodological sense, this positions their volume in the rarified company of the most theoretically-refined academics. It may be that there are fewer than fifty contemporary political scientists who will be able to fathom and build upon their analysis. Valuable to be sure, but for many it will be beyond reach. Graduates and early professionals will certainly try to engage these ideas, but, due to the jargon and the originality,...