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Achieving Democracy opens with a discussion of the historical development of democracy, examining its benefits and various theoretical explanations. It then proceeds to test these theories with empirical evidence, through the examination of country cases studies from the first, second, and third waves of democracy. These case studies were carefully selected for their theoretical importance as well as their geographic, economic, and demographic diversity. Lastly, the work presents an assessment of the potential for democracy in the Middle East based on what is learned from the case studies and concludes with a synthesizing of the findings. Pedagogical tools appear throughout, including hypothesis-testing exercises, discussion questions, tables summarizing primary independent variables associated with democratization, summary of evidence to support or refute a variable's importance, and further readings. Achieving Democracy fills in a gap in the literature by presenting democratic theory in an accessible manner to intermediate undergraduate students, supplying them with the necessary tools to assess theories empirically and to understand democratization fully.