Centre for the Study of Cultural Evolution, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
PLoS One. 2011;6(11):e28270. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0028270. Epub 2011 Nov 30.
Transitions to democracy are most often considered the outcome of historical modernization processes. Socio-economic changes, such as increases in per capita GNP, education levels, urbanization and communication, have traditionally been found to be correlates or 'requisites' of democratic reform. However, transition times and the number of reform steps have not been studied comprehensively. Here we show that historically, transitions to democracy have mainly occurred through rapid leaps rather than slow and incremental transition steps, with a median time from autocracy to democracy of 2.4 years, and overnight in the reverse direction. Our results show that autocracy and democracy have acted as peaks in an evolutionary landscape of possible modes of institutional arrangements. Only scarcely have there been slow incremental transitions. We discuss our results in relation to the application of phylogenetic comparative methods in cultural evolution and point out that the evolving unit in this system is the institutional arrangement, not the individual country which is instead better regarded as the 'host' for the political system.
向民主的过渡通常被认为是历史现代化进程的结果。社会经济变革，如人均 GNP、教育水平、城市化和通讯的增加，传统上被认为是民主改革的相关因素或“必要条件”。然而，过渡时间和改革步骤的数量尚未得到全面研究。在这里，我们表明，从历史上看，向民主的过渡主要是通过快速飞跃而不是缓慢的渐进式过渡步骤实现的，从专制到民主的中位数时间为 2.4 年，而在相反方向则是一夜之间。我们的结果表明，专制和民主在制度安排可能模式的进化景观中充当了高峰。只有很少的缓慢渐进式过渡。我们讨论了我们的结果与文化进化中系统发育比较方法的应用之间的关系，并指出该系统中的进化单位是制度安排，而不是作为政治制度“宿主”的个别国家。
