Revisiting Rokkan: On the determinants of the rise of democracy in Europe

This article is an attempt to extend Rokkan's analysis of the rise of democracy in western Europe also to include eastem Europe. Which relevance do Rokkan's fac-tors - economy, territory, culture - have when applied to both western and eastern Europe? Through the mapping of the development of democracy following the four thres-holds suggested by Rokkan - legitimacy, incorporation, rep-resentation, executive power - a crossnational analysis, based upon at most 28 cases, is made in order to test various explanatory factors. Territory and culture has an impact an the rise of democracy in Europe in general, but in particular an the passing of the First threshold of democracy, i.e. the legitimacy threshold. Other factors, not suggested by Rok-kan, that are conducive to the rise of democracy are what kind of family systems that exists and the occurrencies of elite settlements. Thus, Rokkan's main ideas about the rise of democracy in Western Europe also holds true when ex-tended to cover the whole of Europe.