The International Constraints on Regime Changes

?rst,thelargemajorityof therelatedliteraturefocusesontransitionstodemocracyanddisregardsdevel- mentstowardsauthoritarianism. Itfollowsthatthetheoreticaldebateisdominated byapproachesthataimtoexplaindemocratizationbutpaynoattentiontocontrary developments. Second, the majority of quantitative studies utilize dichotomous measures to operationalize democratization, i. e. democratization is measured in terms of transitions and is de?ned as some polity¿s crossing of threshold levels of a given measure of democracy. This measure thus ignores institutional shifts that do not yield regime changes. As this institutional alterations are included inthemeasures¿parametervalueofstability, suchdichotomousmeasuresfailto re?ect the full variance of the observed institutional alterations. This raises the questionwhetherthe?ndingsofthetransitionliteraturearebiasedduetotheuse ofasomewhatarbitrarydistinctionbetweenregimechangeandregimestability.