Dear DC Girl, Sorry for this 'delay' but here I am with my defense (had to spend all of last night thinking of it): "Extra-regional powers also play a significant role, I agree. But they are not the sole causes for declining authoritarianism or breaking away of communism in many third world countries today. It will take me a long time to detail why countries go into transition, but I will shortly try to bring back some issues IF mentioned earlier. " In Nepal's case it weren't just "extra regional" powers, but intra-regional powers or regional power that was pushing for democracy. " IF, when you say Nepal did not need democracy, or was not ready for democracy, you're sticking to the old literature before the Cold War which concluded that countries in the third world were not ready for democracy, or that only countries with conditions A, B and C can have a collapse of authoritarian regimes and move towards democratic transition. This notion was falsified during the massive democratization process in the 90s. The 90s, specially Dankwart Rustow's Model for transitional democracies set a trend for 'no preconditions' required for democracy; even a state with the stark authoritarianism or least development could move towards democratic transition. " You are right to some degree and I give credits to you for that, but you are not right entirely. Of course, that some countries are not ready for democracy justified American support for the dictators all over (and the same logic is used to justify the American support for Egypt, Saudi Arabia and places like that..), but after the cold war, when people had access to those formerly unaccessible places or off limit places, people saw how they really were, and surprinsingly enough, the State Department proved right! Yes, certain countries were/are not ready for the transition. I haven't read *ANY* of the books/authors mentioned, and that's the beauty of academia. You can assume extreme positions and as long as you can prove your hypothesis/thesis, you are fine. However, since we are discussing the issue, let me counter your point with what I have read: Yes, many nations went through this masive democratization phase in the 90s, but how many of them are functioning- fully functioning- democracies? Look at Rumania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia and the Central Asian Countries, do you think they are functioning democracies? I don't think so.. In my view, the are autocracies- neo-authoririan rules in democratic disguise. So I hate to write this, I DISAGREE with you based on WHAT I know, not on what I DON"T KNOW. Now, let me address the "cosolidation issue": Your example to compare Nepal with Italy vis-a-vis democratic consodilation is wrong. Italy is and was an industrial economy, with a significant already "politically charged" labor population. Nepal doesn't have that.. as a result the middle class is virtually non existant. Furthermore, when you talk about Italy, you have to talk about the political instability there too, hoina? Democratic consolidation: From what I understand from my readings, there's two periods- 'transitional' and 'habitual'.. an optimistic point of view is during the 'habitual' period democracies consolidate, so no factors/variables like economy etc. matter, but I would argue otherwise: many countries do not go through - at least in the case with many neo democracies, the habitual phase.. The transition phase is "long, bruitish and nasty" because they do not resolve the coordination dillema (Wiengast). So when you do not resolve the coordination dilemma, which forms the basis of the new social contract between the three players- the soverign, elites and the commonmers- you are basically screwed. Westren European nations or where the democracies functions today, resolved this coordination dillema before or soon after they democratized, because then the world was still less interconnected, unlike today.. One of the ways they resoved this coordination dilelma was through economy- with economic development they bridged the ethnic and economic gaps in their respective societies. Where democarcy does not resolve- or solve?- this coordination dillema, like in Latin American countries ( and this explains why democarcies do not work there), "a surprsingly large portion of the citizinry has in the past (even todaybeen willing to support extraconstitutional means of political change." (italics mine)