Governments spend money – lots of it. Governments would spend even more if they could, as the needs and wants of their citizens know few limits. Governments differ less in their desire for resources than in their ability to generate them, what they choose to do with them, and how well they do it.While the spending power of any government would be the envy of ordinary citizens, it is true that governments are not equally endowed, and that, while all governments might face fiscal constraints, these bind tighter and more harshly for some than others.

The ability to deliver public services to citizens is a primary function of modern states everywhere. However, doing so is increasingly expensive, as the scope of demands made by citizens continues to grow. When governments fail to provide services of sufficient quality and quantity, citizens must obtain private substitutes from the marketplace or religious and social organizations. Governments face steep costs when they fail to meet voters’ needs, however, as President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil discovered when major protests broke out in Brazil over the price of public transportation. Samuel Huntington foresaw such troubles, warning that citizens’ demands would overwhelm states lacking robust institutions to channel such demands. His concern was that weak institutions – principally the absence of strong political parties – would fail to provide avenues for peaceful opposition.

Huntington's prediction in Political Order in Changing Societies might appear unduly pessimistic in hindsight. Only six years following its publication, in 1974, the Third Wave of democracy commenced in Iberia. An optimist might conclude that these events rendered anachronistic Huntington's original prediction that the inability to generate basic public goods would doom states to chronic instability. Not so fast. Huntington worried that popular protests would undermine weak institutions and that vulnerable governments would respond by resorting to praetorianism. They did, but only for as long as that option remained available. The advent of the electoral boom soon after the Berlin Wall crumbled galvanized a sea change in international politics. Elections became the sole route to international political legitimacy and governments everywhere and of all stripes rushed to secure electoral mandates. The electoral boom might suggest that Huntington got it wrong – rather than undermine democracy, popular participation provoked by poorly performing states appeared to have bolstered it.