Huntington, Samuel P. "Will More Countries Become Democratic?" Political Science Quarterly v. 99, n. 2 (1984): 193-218.

What are the prospects for the emergence of more democratic regimes in the world? This question has intellectual and policy relevance for the 1980s. During the 1950s and early 1960s, scholars concerned with this issue were generally optimistic that decolonialization and economic development would lead to the multiplication of democratic regimes. The history of the next decade dealt roughly with these expectations, and people became pessimistically preoccupied with the reasons for the breakdown of democratic systems. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, the prospects for democracy seemed to have brightened once again, and social scientists have responded accordingly. … The purpose of this article is to use social science theory and comparative political analysis to see to what extent this new, more cautious optimism may be justified.

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