INTRODUCTION

The first four case studies might lead readers to conclude that there was something unique about European culture that made it “ready” for parliamentary democracy in 1820. The king-and-council template had long been used for European governance and provided numerous opportunities for peaceful constitutional reform. Liberalism can be regarded as the political reform agenda of the enlightenment, a European intellectual development. Many of the most important technological innovations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were worked out in Europe. Overall, it might be argued that European ideas and institutions made Europe uniquely ready to shift from autocracy to democracy without revolution.

The theory developed in Part I is, however, not a theory of European transitions. It suggests that similar ideas and opportunities for constitutional bargaining will exist in other societies in which broadly similar institutions are in place and trends in constitutional-bargaining opportunities favor liberal reforms. The last two case studies demonstrate that the European transitions were not unique.