9632230 Treiman This Doctoral Dissertation Improvement research will examine the negotiations between the National Party of South Africa and the black opposition. It will explore the factors that brought the National Party to the negotiating table and investigate the role of social movement insurgency and political parties in "making democracy." The working hypotheses suggests that black insurgency forced the regime to consider negotiations, while the reorganization of the party and changes in its constituency made the negotiations possible. This dissertation will challenge prevailing theoretical formulations in the literature on democratization which suggests that large-scale insurgency leads either to elite-aborted democratization, or revolution from below, both precursor to a reassertion of authoritarianism. This seems to suggest that ordinary people can, and should, participate in democratizing states and that elite compromises can lead to win-win outcomes. The researchers will gather data from both archival sources (state and National Party archives), in-depth elite interviews. These will be further supplemented with information from newspapers, secondary literature and survey data. *** ??
