Political factors predict the future of democracy in Latin America more accurately than economic measurements, Scott Mainwaring said Tuesday in a lecture on modernization and democratization in Latin America.

"It's absolutely implausible," Mainwaring said, "that economic performance in Latin America has any explicability for democratic survivability."

Director of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and a professor of government and international studies, Mainwaring is on leave from the University this semester to further his research on democracy in Latin America.

"He is the most prolific scholar of our generation," said Frances Hagopian, the acting director of the Kellogg Institute during Mainwaring's absence.

In his lecture, Mainwaring emphasized the significance of political factors such as international diffusion and modes of political competition.

"Democracy as a political regime in Latin America seems to be highly contingent," said Mainwaring. "These results find a largely political explanation to democracy in Latin America rather than structural factors."

This international diffusion effect refers to the increasing likelihood of a country to turn to democracy if that nation has the support of other democratic nations.

"The international context of regimes has a very powerful impact," Mainwaring said. "Where actors are committed to democracy, this will manifest itself in modes of political competition and contestation."

Mainwaring, an expert in Latin American politics, countered theories that say countries with higher levels of economic development have a better chance of becoming and remaining democracies.

"Whereas global studies based on large numbers of countries show that modernization affects democracy," Mainwaring said, "the correlation between modernization and democracy is much weaker in Latin America."

Mainwaring then discussed why many popular theories on how wealth affects democracy are lacking. One widely held theory is that as a country's per capita income increases, democracy becomes increasingly likely. The second theory, put forth by Kellogg Institute professor Guillermo O'Donnell, is that democracy continues to become more likely as per capita income rises, but at a certain point, this likelihood of democracy tapers off or even declines.

Mainwaring argued that a significant number of Latin American countries do not fit such global models for predicting democracy and cited three principal anomalies to such theories. The last wave of democratization in Latin America was led by several poor countries, while wealthier countries, like Argentina and Brazil, actually reverted back to authoritarian regimes during the 1960s and 1970s. Also, periods of economic growth have not led to increased democratization, as political scientists espousing modernization theories had predicted.

Mainwaring placed most Latin American countries within the range of middle development, where it is difficult to predict the political regime.

"If you take a global scale," Mainwaring said, "Latin American countries, most of them fall within a certain band, and this band is precisely the band where regime type is most indeterminate."

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