This article seeks to provide a comprehensive re-evaluation of the redistributive models of democracy advanced by Carles Boix, and Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, their reception within the democratization literature, and the subsequent trajectories of their authors. Contrary to the existing literature, which commonly envisions RMDs as a unified framework, this article argues that Boix and Acemoglu and Robinson’s models should be understood as divergent theories of democratic transitions. In the aftermath of numerous criticisms, both authors have developed sharply different understandings of democratization. We argue that Acemoglu and Robinson have backtracked from their original formulation toward a “Whiggish” history of the rise of liberty, while Boix has increasingly reverted to the core propositions of classical modernization theory. In the process, this article argues that RMDs have lost, and reneged on, much of their apparent explanatory power regarding transitions to and reversions from democracy.

本文旨在对卡尔斯·博瓦、达龙·阿西莫格鲁和詹姆斯·罗宾逊提出的民主再分配模式、他们在民主化文献中的接受情况以及他们的作者随后的发展轨迹进行全面的重新评估。现有文献通常将 RMD 视为一个统一的框架，与此相反，本文认为博瓦、阿西莫格鲁和罗宾逊的模型应被理解为民主转型的不同理论。在无数次批评之后，两位作者对民主化产生了截然不同的理解。我们认为，阿西莫格鲁和罗宾逊已经从他们最初的表述转向“辉格派”自由兴起的历史，而博瓦则越来越多地回归到古典现代化理论的核心命题。