Continuing Trends?

In his article “The End of the Transition Paradigm”, Thomas Carothers argues that the idea that states undergo a natural transition from authoritarianism to a more democratic society is outdated and irrelevant in today’s world. Many of the countries which Western political scientists consider to be “in transition” have not only failed to become liberal democratic states, but some have become even more oppressive. While this may be the case for some countries, the general trends presented by Larry Diamond in his article on hybrid regimes seem to hold true.
Ok, let’s crunch some numbers…
Diamond uses statistics from Freedom House to examine the change in political regimes from 1974 to 2001. Have the trends that he pointed out continued in the last seven years?

2001 2008
Number of liberal democracies 73 79
(1.0-2.0 on the 7- point scale)

Number of repressive regimes 21 17
(6.5-7.0 on the 7-point scale)


1974 2001 2008
Average score worldwide 4.47 3.47 3.23

I have selected a few of the more telling statistics, but similar comparisons by region and regime type offer similar results. It seems, then, that Diamond’s belief in a worldwide transition towards democracy continues to be supported by the data. This offers no insight into any particular country case study, but it does support the classical transition paradigm.