原文及其作者：普沃斯基（Adam Przeworski），是一位杰出的比较政治学家，目前任教于芝加哥大学。今天这篇文章发表于1997年，是对此前主宰政治经济学领域的现代化理论的评析和再议，整理出了很多具体的数字来佐证推理，给出了非常多的重要结论，大幅修正此前由利普塞特（Seymour Lipset）祖师爷提出的现代化理论，即认为经济发展会带来民主、民主是现代化经济发展的必然产物、资助贫困的独裁国家使其获得经济发展是扩展民主的有效路径。这一理论流派在过去的几十年间，尤其是冷战期间，大幅影响了以美国为首的许多西方国家的外交政策。

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Modernization: Theories and Facts

I. Economic Development and Democracy

p156-157 Yet there are two distinct reasons this relation may hold: either democracies may be more likely to emerge as countries develop economically, or they may be established independently of economic development but may be more likely to survive in developed countries.

• 根据一些数据统计，人们很早就发现，经济发展水平和国家是否为民主政体存在相当明显的相关性。于是对此有两条主流解释路径：是发达的经济会带来民主（endogenous）？还是说经济和政体可以分别有自己的状态，但民主更容易在经济发达的国家中存续（exogenous）？

p159 In fact, transitions are increasingly likely as per capita income of dictatorships rises but only until it reaches a level of about $6,000. Above that, dictatorships become more stable as countries become more affluent.

• 但是，同样是从数据中，本文的两位作者发现，民主转型的概率只在人均GDP小于$6000的范围里是随着经济发展而增加的（以人均GDP的高低来衡量发展水平的高低）。对于人均GDP超越$6000的独裁国家而言，经济越是发达反而政权越是稳固。

• 另外需要注意一下，原文里用 “$” 符号表示的并不是今天的美元，是1985年的购买力平价美元（1985 Purchasing Power Parity USD）。这个东西的意思首先是，不同的年份因为通胀的问题，同样数字的钱不一定有同样的购买力，这篇文章里的钱数以1985年的美元数字为准；其次，购买力平价的意思是指，以相同的购买力为标准来换算同样时间段里的不同货币，比方说如果xx美刀和xx人民币都正好买一个同样的苹果，那它们的 PPP 价格就是相同的。

• 不过我自己琢磨下表里的数据（原文里的 Table 1）注意到事情可以有另一个解读视角，把独裁国家按照人均GDP来分类的话，转型概率处于中位数以上的收入段整整齐齐集中在$4000-7000区间内，经济低于此区间的转型概率暴跌，高于此区间的转型概率也跌。下降幅度分别为 (0.0492 - 0.0161) / 0.0492 = 67.3% 和 (0.0625 - 0.0333) / 0.0625 = 46.7%。

p163-164 This is not to say that democracies did not sometimes emerge because countries became modern; put otherwise, dictatorships do not necessarily fall for the same reasons in all countries. …… however: among the countries that satisfy the premise of the modernization theory, the range of levels at which dictatorships survived is very wide (see the list in Table 4).

p165-166 In turn, per capita income, our measure of the level of development, has a strong impact on the survival of democracies. The simple fact is that during the period under scrutiny or ever before, no democracy ever fell, regardless of everything else, in a country with a per capita income higher than that of Argentina in 1975: $6,055. Thirty-two democracies spent 736 years with incomes above $6,055 and not one collapsed, while thirty-nine out of sixty-nine democracies did fall in countries that were poorer. As Table 1 shows, the probability that democracy survives increases monotonically with per capita income. …… the effect of income survives when education is controlled, and indeed it is much stronger.

• 但是回去看表1（Table 1）的PDA那一列，那一列的数字是某一收入段的民主国家转变为独裁国家的概率，趋势是随着国家的经济水平上升而一路下降的。也就是说，经济水平对于民主的生存率的影响倒是非常不含糊的，就是单调的线性相关。

• 以防有人绕糊涂了，注意一下，这篇文章里的经济发展水平、人均GDP、收入，是一个意思。人均GDP是用来衡量经济发展这个概念的测量指标；而GDP从定义上而言既是一国的总生产值、总消费，也是总收入，原文和我的笔记里说到收入的时候有时候会把“人均”两个字省略。

• 民主政体在贫穷的国家里脆弱的要命，糟糕的经济水平虽然都会降低不同政体的稳定性，但是它对于民主政体的生存率的影响要远甚于对独裁政体的。

II. Ups or Downs?

p167 Rapid growth is not destabilizing for democracy (and neither is it for dictatorship). When democracies face a decline in incomes, they die at the rate of 0.0523 and can be expected to last nineteen years, but when incomes are growing, they die at the rate of 0.0160, with an expected life of sixty-four years. Moreover, democracies that grow slowly, at the rate of less than 5 percent per annum, die at the rate of 0.0173, while those that grow at a rate faster than 5 percent die at the rate of 0.0132. (See Table 5.)

• 民主政体对于经济问题非常敏感，经济表现是增长还是衰退能在相同收入水平的民主国家的生存率之间拉开非常大的差距。即使是很贫穷的国家，虽则低收入水平不利于民主的存续，但只要能保持正的经济增长，民主的存活概率也能大幅度提高。（在人均年收入小于$1000的国家，做到经济正增长能把民主政体的死亡率降低一半以上，从21.74%到8.16%）

• 作者还提到了他们在做研究的时候的另一个发现，经济危机的政治影响几乎稳定发生于一年之后，而且和此前的发展路径无关。也就是说，不论此前创造了多么辉煌（或半死不活）的增长，只需要一年的经济衰退就能造成严重的政治影响。

III. Kinks: Modernization Theory Revisited

p170 Is there some level of development beyond which democracies are more likely to die than before? Note (returning to Table 2, column 5) that the function relating the equilibrium proportion of democracies to per capita income has a kink at levels between $3,001 and $4,000: the observed values are 42.4 percent between $2,001 and $3,000, 32.6 percent between $3,001 and $4,000, and 72.0 percent between $4,001 and $5,000. But this kink is due to the fact that dictatorships are exceptionally stable in this range, rather than that democracies are less stable. The probability of a democracy dying declines monotonically with per capita income.

• 人均收入在$4000-5000这个区间里的独裁国家异常顽强。原文没有展开探索为什么。

IV. Does History Repeat Itself?

p171 Since our observations begin in 1950, the regimes we observed came into being as a result of either of two effects: their dynamic or the entrance of new countries into the world, or at least into our sample. …… Hence, with regard to the “old” countries, our count roughly agrees with Huntington’s oceanic analysis, …… Hence, the proportion of democracies among these “new” countries grew slightly with no waves rolling down or up. In turn, the decline of the aggregate proportion of democracies in the world during the 1960s is largely due to the emergence of new countries rather than to transformations of old ones.

• 这篇论文收集的数据从1950年开始，或者从一个新生国家的出现开始、从某个国家第一年开始有可收集的经济数据开始。两位作者发现，对于1950年以前就存在的国家而言，它们的民主化或者民主退行基本符合亨廷顿（Samuel Huntington）的“波论”，就是他描述民主政治在全球的发展模式呈现出像波浪一样的三起三落，详见他的经典著作《第三波》；但是对于1950年后出现的新生国家而言，民主政体的数量基本上是稳定而缓慢的增加，并不符合亨廷顿所描述的模式。

p173 All this is not much to stand on, but perhaps enough to believe that (1) the levels at which democracies emerged before World War II were highly scattered; (2) they did not differ between Western Europe and other parts of the world; and (3) once established, democracies were more likely to fall in the poorer countries.

p174-176 The stability of democracy increases much more with development in the old than in the new countries. In turn, while development decreases slightly the probability of survival of dictatorships in old countries, the probability of transitions to democracy declines as new countries develop under authoritarian rule.

Hence, the promise that development would breed democracy proved to be particularly futile precisely with regard to those Third World countries to which it was supposed to offer hope. …… Most of the new countries, the great majority of them poor when they became independent, just remained poor and those few that did develop remained authoritarian.

V. Conclusion

p176 Whether couched in the language of the modernization perspective or the historical perspective, theories of the origins of democracy were deterministic. In the modernization theory no one does anything to bring democracy about; it is secreted by economic development and the corollary social transformations. …… The protagonists in the struggles for democracy could not and did not believe that the fate of their countries would be determined either by current levels of development or by the distant past. They maintained that, albeit within constraints, democratization was an outcome of actions, not just of conditions. Hence, the O’Donnell-Schmitter project was couched in terms of actors and strategies, rather than in terms of deterministic conditions.

• 至此，普沃斯基和利蒙吉（就是这篇文章的两位作者，Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi）总结到一个关键点：此前由利普塞特开启的现代化理论流派，把民主化视为某种静态条件的副产物，认为有经济水平就会有民主，没有就没有。但是在他们发表这篇论文的前后，由另一波学者领衔（Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986)），学界开始探索，在民主政体的产生过程中——在现代，这也就往往意味着革除原先的非民主政体——具有更大影响力的因素：人们的行动。这一新的流派也在王天成的那本《大转型》里被翻译为转型学。

p177-178 While Lipset treated development as exogenous, his contemporaries were persuaded that dictatorship is the inevitable price of development. …… Since this view dictatorships generate development while development leads to democracy, the best way to democracy was said to be a circuitous one. Yet common sense would indicate that in order to strengthen democracy we should strengthen democracy, not support dictatorships.

• 此前，在现代化理论的主导下，尤其是以美国为首的很多西方国家输出民主的方式是支持独裁国家的经济发展，因为当年利普塞特祖师爷的同辈经济学家们顺理成章的论证，不论如何只要先把一国的经济发展起来就会带来民主。接受中国进入世贸组织也是出于类似的逻辑，没成想引导出来的不是民主化而是韧性威权和独裁者的全球联盟。但在转型学逐渐取代现代化理论而发展壮大之后，现在的许多扛鼎学者对于非民主政体的态度就（终于）开始明显转恶了。

原文信息：Przeworski, Adam, and Fernando Limongi. “Modernization: Theories and Facts.” World Politics, vol. 49, no. 2, 1997, pp. 155–83.