State-Formation and Democratization

Thomas Denk is Chair Professor of Political Science at Örebro University, Sweden. His research focuses on democratization, political culture, state-formation, and political methodology. Sarah Lehtinen is Research Analyst at the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRÅ) and former Researcher in Political Science at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. She has examined how political institutions during state-formations are developed and democratized, investigated the conditions of democratic diffusion, and developed quantitative databases.

• 1: Introduction.- 2: A Comparative Framework of State-Formation.- 3: Paths to Independence.- 4: Paths to Independence and Democratization.- 5: The Legacy of Initial Regimes and Democratization in New States.- 6: Conclusion.

“The book by Denk and Lehtinen is a new approach to the relation between state formation and democratization. It provides a well-designed argument to support a thesis that both analysed processes are linked, and utilizes clearly triangulated methods to show it. Many scholars will appreciate the study for its clarity and consistency – a valuable point of departure especially for more contextual and dynamic analyses of fundamental political processes in the times of global flux.” (Krzysztof Kasianiuk, Democratization, Vol. 27 (2), 2020)