Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Guner (2015) argues that global uncertainty raised by power shifts in the global system are likely to impact authoritarian elite behavior leading to their concession to share political power and thus democratizations in the Middle East. In her article, Guner (2015) tests her hypothesis by looking at twenty countries in the Middle East. This study expands Guner (2015) and looks at 156 countries to test her hypothesis at the global level. In this study, I use cross-country panel data and country clustered logit regression models on 8628 observations, 156 countries ranging from 1815 until 2004. The results support Guner (2015)’s argument that global power transfers have short-term and long-term impacts on democratization.