Opportunities

Improvements in social conditions and in the institutions that shape them often seem unbearably slow. But significant and sometimes sweeping institutional reforms do occur, as with democratization in South Africa, the successful anticorruption campaign in Hong Kong (China), and decentralization in Latin America (figure 3.5).

Opportunities for reform often arise from economic or political crises that inspire civil society or political elites to demand changes in the status quo and to search for new solutions to long-standing problems. In Latin America, perceived crises in the legitimacy of governing institutions have inspired substantial democratizing reforms that give greater voice and power to local communities (chapter 7). On a more routine basis, opportunities appear as a result of elections, changes in agency leadership, or discretionary decisions by national leaders. And opportunities for reform arise with changing public preferences, and with changes such as education, urbanization , technological change, and income growth. For example, new generations of individuals raised in conditions of material prosperity and stability tend to place greater emphasis on freedom of expression and quality of life.⁴⁹

The demands that societies place on their institutions also change as a result of observing other societies. In recent years the transnational social movement for indigenous rights, the sweep of independence movements across Eastern Europe, and the multinational campaign for transparency in governance show that new social demands can spread rapidly across borders.