In political sociology, studies of democratization have historically split down methodological lines. The split between qualitative and quantitative research does not just refer to a difference in approaches to research. These two traditions have also generally found different, even contradictory results. Aside from the methodological split, there are also some distinct substantive categories in democracy research. Democratization researchers do not look at democracy alone. Rather, they have typically looked at the relationship between democracy and some other social process or phenomenon. Three key foci of this research have been democracy and development, democracy and inequality, and democracy and dependence. I touch on all three of these substantive areas below. As with any field of disparate approaches to the same object of study, regular attempts at synthesis are key to making progress. To this end, I will review some recent work by Ruschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens (1992) and Kurzman and Leahey (2004) that has attempted to bridge the qualitative/quantitative divide.

Though there have been many quantitative analyses, I will discuss four which I believe clearly represent the nature of this branch of democracy research. This research has generally supported a theory of modernization, seeing economic development and democracy as positively correlated across time and space. These theories often predict that most developing countries should eventually reach democracy.

Seymour Martin Lipset (1959) provides one of the first quantitative analyses of democratization that linked democracy to development. Lipset’s theory was derived from Durkheim and Weber and was similar to modernization theory in its focus on societal evolution and its systemic conception of society. Lipset’s basic argument was that industrial development/modernization led to increased wealth, education, communication, and equality. These, in turn, led to moderate lower and upper classes and large middle class, all of which led to a more stable democracy. Lipset is an example of the tendency toward grand theory in early democratization research.

Bollen (1979), Bollen and Jackman (1983), and Hannan and Carroll (1981) are part of a later trend in quantitative work that focused less on grand theory and more on careful testing of hypotheses. Their work provides mixed support for the findings of Lipset and other modernization theorists. Bollen finds no clear relationship between democratization and development either in terms of timing of development or level of development. Bollen and Jackman also find no clear relationship between democracy and inequality. But other work still finds some support for Lipset’s theory. Hannan and Carroll (1981) set out to explore the transitions from one political regime to another. They find that high economic production has the negative effect on regime change that modernization theory would predict.

All in all, the main finding from these kinds of quantitative analyses is that there is some positive connection between development and democracy, though its mechanisms are unclear. In fact, detailed explanation for mechanisms or causal dynamics (or lack thereof) is the major shortcoming of the majority of the quantitative studies. This is also the area where qualitative researchers have the most to contribute.

Unlike the quantitative work discussed above, the main finding of qualitative research on democratization has has been that the social, political, and economic circumstances surrounding the development of democracy in the West were historically unique and unlikely to occur again. This insight was first offered by Karl de Schweinitz but has been taken up by the majority of qualitative studies of democratization since.

Barrington Moore’s 1966 work on the origins of dictatorship and democracy is one of the influential of these later works. Moore offers a sweeping theory that traces three pathways to modernization: communist/revolutionary dictatorship, fascism, or bourgeois democracy. The path taken depends on the commercialization of agriculture and the interplay between four classes: peasants, land-owning elites, urban elites and middle class, and the ruler/political apparatus of the premodern system. Moore’s work furthered the idea of the historical contingency of modernization and provided a strong comparative historical analysis to support it.

While the import of this work is clear and it was well received in general, Moore also has his detractors. Ruschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens take issue with his neglect of the working class. Skocpol’s Social Origins takes Moore to task for his neglect of the role of the state or of international relations. Skocpol hoped to combine Moore’s domestic class-based analysis with dependency and world-system theory.

World-system and dependency theory is not entirely at odds with Moore’s work. Most work in this vein tends to support the idea that modernization could lead to authoritarian rule, especially in dependent countries on the periphery or semiperiphery. Indeed, O’Donnell’s (1979) work on democratization in Latin America found just such an “elective affinity” between capitalist development and authoritarian rule.

I propose that the the most pressing need in the sociological study of democratization is for synthesis. It is imperative that we bridge the gap between the quantitative and qualitative literatures so that we can take advantage of the strengths of both approaches. On the one side, case-oriented qualitative research takes account of past conflicts and historical structures. This qualitative research seeks out critical collective actors and accounts for their interplay with specific historical environments. On the other, quantitative research attempts to reduce selection bias through large sample sizes. These researchers have made some good headway in providing generalizable structural explanations of democratization processes. Thus, it’s clear that these two traditions have a lot to offer to a general understanding of democratization.

Building on this insight, a number of researchers have adopted a decidedly synthetic approach. Perhaps the most successful is Ruschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens’ (1992) Capitalist Development and Democracy. Coming primarily from a comparative historical perspective, they acknowledge the strength of the theoretical complexity of qualitative research but they feel that the bulk of quantitative evidence calls for any theory of democratization to account for the positive relationship between development and democracy.

Kurzman and Leahey (2004) provide another good example of this bridging work with their analysis of the role of intellectuals in democratization. They call further attention to the distinction between qualitative and quantitiative work, noting that qualitative researchers focus mostly on formation and political position of social groups while quantitative researchers focus on national characterisics. They address the divide by taking a mixed methods approach, providing a comparative historical analysis of early democratization and a large N statistical analysis of more recent political events.

In conclusion, it is clear that sociological studies of democratization cover a wide range of issues from a number of different perspectives. Given the progress made in these various endeavors, now is a good time to work diligently to synthesize the disparate lines of research. The work of Ruschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens as well as that of Kurzman and Leahey provides good models for this future synthetic research.