The economic, social and political consequences of democratic reforms. A quantitative and qualitative comparative analysis

The latter part of the twentieth century was a period of rapid democratisation on a global scale. The attention of comparative politics scholars followed the progression of so-called Third Wave democracies, and gradually progressed from the study of the causes of and the transitions to democracy to the problems of democratic consolidation, and then to more recent issues relating to the quality of democracy. A further, frontier step may now be added to such research path by focusing on a subject that has remained largely under-researched, if at all, namely the political, social and economic consequences that emerged in countries where real democratic change took place. The question of what democracy has been able to deliver will become ever more relevant to the future prospects of recent democratisation processes and of democracy at large. In the study of the consequences of democratisation, the advent of democracy is thus no longer observed as an endpoint, or a dependent variable to be explained, but as a starting point, or an independent variable that allegedly contributes to the explanation of a wide range of political, economic and social effects. The question of the corollaries of democratisation also has crucial policy implications. The goals of the proposed research are: a) the definition of a theoretical framework that articulates, integrates and interrelates the different existing hypotheses and arguments on the consequences of democratization processes b) the empirical investigation, through a combination and integration of quantitative and qualitative methods, of the validity of three specific such hypotheses, namely: i. democratisation favours the consolidation of the state (as a political effect) ii. Democratisation favours economic liberalization (as an economic effect) iii. Democratisation improves social welfare (as a social effect) c) the analysis of the specific forms that the effects of democratization assume in different world region