Organizing Democracy : How International Organizations Assist New Democracies

In the past twenty-five years, a number of countries have made the transition to democracy. The support of international organizations is essential to success on this difficult path. Yet, despite extensive research into the relationship between democratic transitions and membership in international organizations, the mechanisms underlying the relationship remain unclear.

With Organizing Democracy, Paul Poast and Johannes Urpelainen argue that leaders of transitional democracies often have to draw on the support of international organizations to provide the public goods and expertise needed to consolidate democratic rule. Looking at the Baltic states’ accession to NATO, Poast and Urpelainen provide a compelling and statistically rigorous account of the sorts of support transitional democracies draw from international institutions. They also show that, in many cases, the leaders of new democracies must actually create new international organizations to better serve their needs, since they may not qualify for help from existing ones.

Paul Poast is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a research affiliate of the Pearson Institute for the Study of Global Conflicts. He is the author of The Economics of War. Johannes Urpelainen is the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Professor of Energy, Resources, and Environment in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author or coauthor of four books, including Cutting the Gordian Knot of Economic Reform.