Abstract

Even though there is research on the impact of power balances on international stability, the impact of power configurations on democratization and regime change seem to be ignored. In this article, I argue that global power transitions and configurations of power may have an impact on regime change. Global uncertainty produced by power shifts may lead to a change in authoritarian elite behavior and open the pathways for democratization. I test this hypothesis by looking at 156 countries at the global level. I use cross-country panel data and country clustered logit regression models on 8,628 observations within a timeframe ranging from 1815 until 2004. The results support the argument that global power transfers have short-term and long-term impacts on democratization.