| The cascading transitions of 1989 made especially evident a significant lacuna in research on regime democratization: the common failure to consider the role of external variables. In response, this study proposes a comprehensive analytical framework, and then applies it to the question of response, this study proposes a comprehensive analytical framework, and then applies it to the question of how the external world can regularly impact the emergence of domestic regime transition.; Focusing on the nature of the influence as opposed simply to identifying ‘linkages,’ this conceptual framework initially identifies five separate types of external influence. More importantly, joining comparative politics and international relations, an interactive ‘transition matrix’ is constructed embedding the comparative politics strategic choice model of regime transition within an external or international context.; This framework is then applied in a historical comparative study of all twentieth-century transitions within the China mainland and Taiwan, focusing upon the three more ambiguous and therefore analytically interesting cases: the 1911 Revolution era (1909–1928), Taiwan's ‘quiet’ transition (1986–1996), and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). This study argues, first, that certain configurations of international factors tend to be highly robust and independent catalysts of transition. These configurations are often centered upon the confluence of external threat and contagion, but notably, this catalytic effect often does not flow simply from the strategic decisions of foreign state actors. Even without the involvement of any external conscious intent, international factors can deeply shape the domestic ingredients essential for the emergence of transition by profoundly undermining the political position of power-holding elites, providing the principal focal points for the crystallization of a domestic opposition, and broadly shaping the transition agenda.; Secondly, it is argued that impact from such external configurations is tempered or facilitated by two dimensions of vulnerability in a domestic political system, broad and specific. Broad vulnerability, or the general degree to which the domestic status quo can be insulated from the external world, may in theory substantially modulate external impacts. However, this study finds it to be far less salient than any existing specific vulnerability, i.e., that resulting from the confluence of (1) certain external configurations and (2) the prominent linkages of leading domestic power-holders with the outside world. |
