Center for European Studies

Dr. Skaaning is Professor of Political Science at Aarhus University and one of the principal investigators for Varieties of Democracy project. He is author of Requisites of Democracy, Democracy and Democratization in Comparative Perspective, and The Rule of Law, as well as articles on democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, and comparative methods in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Democratization, Political Research Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, and Sociological Methods & Research.

Abstract: A vibrant civil society has been rejected as a positive, independent cause of democratic stability based on studies of Germany and Italy in the interwar years. Based on a survival analysis of all democratic spells in the context of the interwar period, using indicators on party institutionalization and on the strength of civil society from the V-Dem project, we show that civil society decreases the risk for democratic breakdown but that there is no independent or conditional effect of party institutionalization. Moreover, the results indicate that the impact of two more proximate triggers of regime change, economic crisis and autocratic demonstration effects, are conditioned by the strength of civil society.

This talk is courtesy of the Ehrlich Chair in Political Science. Faculty and Students from the Department of Political Science and the Center for European Studies are welcome to attend. Light refreshments provided.