In Part I, democratization is defined and the theorical approaches, explanatory factors and comparative methods used throughout the book are introduced. Each of the subsequent twenty chapters can stand on its own, but all have been framed by the explanatory framework set out here.

Part II surveys the course of democratization in Europe and the USA from 1760 to 1989. It examines the early breakthrough of the French and American revolutions, the inter-war crises of European democracy, the impact of the Second World War on European polities and the struggle of the Civil Rights Movement in the USA.

Latin America and Asia are considered in Part III. Two chapters address the distinctive story of democratization in Latin America generally from the 1930s to the 1990s. The Asia chapters explain the political trajectories of India, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

The relative weakness of democratization in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East is interrogated in Part IV. Explanations of the general patterns of democratization in the two regions are complemented by individual case studies of South Africa and Israel. There is also a synoptic consideration of the relationship between Islam and democracy.

Part V tackles the democratic revolutions of 1989 and their aftermath in Eastern Europe, Russia and other states. The enmeshment of these processes of democratization with nationalist struggles is highligted in a study of Czechoslovkia and Yugoslavia, while the particular course of the remaining socialist states is examined in a chapter on Vietnam.

Finally, the conclusion both reviews the regional variations of democratization and considers the pressing question of how democracies onece created can be sustained.