1. Introduction

During the second half of the twentieth century, mainstream scholarship investigating the origins and expansion of democratic states presented the democratization process as the outcome of domestic conditions not significantly influenced by actors or forces outside the nation-state. During that period, the role of external factors was usually ignored by scholars, in favor of domestic causes rooted in culture and historical norms emerging from political economy. In the post-Cold War era, this perspective was challenged as a result of the findings of studies examining the ‘third wave’ of democratization and the subsequent growth of “good governance” discourse on the agenda of the international development establishment. While not fundamentally challenging the traditional premise that privileged the primacy of domestic factors, the new perspective nonetheless attached a more significant role to external factors in the democratization process than was originally conceptualized.