9511577 O'Loughlin This research investigation uses a political geography perspective to examine the diffusion of democratic norms and practices across time and space. The study encompasses the period since the emergence of the modern nation-state beginning with the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and covers the subsequent waves of democratization, including the 19th century, decolonialization in the mid-20th century, and the most recent period of democratic transition, starting in the 1980s and continuing in the mid-1990s. This investigation rejects the atomistic frameworks that have been used to date to study the diffusion of democracy. These frameworks have focused separately on globalism, regionalism, and localism. Rather, the investigators develop and test theoretical propositions that integrate all three levels of scale, yet retain a temporal dimension. The approach integrates internal political economic processes, regional political economic competition, as well as the impact and influence of the global political economy upon the spread of democratic norms and practices. Context sensitive models of this process attuned to the across-space and over-time variations are developed and tested. Using dynamic cartographic techniques designed to display quantitative information intuitively, the investigators show how the ebbs and flows of democratic norms have regional and local, as well as global causes. Using dynamic space-time statistical techniques, the investigators develop parameters to describe this process. The objective is a more complete, contextually informed model of the ways in which democratic norms and processes have been extended over time and over space. This investigation will help elaborate how political and economic changes implicate each other at different levels of scale. It will also contribute to an understanding of what encourages the development and survival of democratic norms and rules in new contexts. Importantly, it will al so address the debate between different views of the sources of democracy, integrating each into a contextually sensitive perspective that spans the global, regional, and local scale. ***
