The diffusion of Revolutions. A Comparison of regime turnovers in 5 Countries

Abstract The recent wave of revolutions or near-revolutions in Serbia, Georgia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine shared the following characteristics: they were triggered by stolen elections, they were the result of massive but non-violent demonstrations, and the opposition united behind a single, often charismatic, leader. This article combines two theoretical perspectives on the recent revolutions in South-Eastern Europe and Central Asia: a state failure perspective that focuses on the domestic characteristics that might explain these events, and a diffusion perspective that focuses on the interrelatedness between these events by means of the interchange of financial resources, activists and knowledge. It concludes that foreign interventions aimed at the democratization of unstable states might facilitate regime change by democratic or undemocratic means, but it never is a sufficient condition for regime change