I read this book in 1995 and I have never found a better one in analyzing democratization since then. His idea on democracy as a result of "spontaneous compliance" is so powerful that nothing else can actually stimulate more on a research direction for the preconditions of democratization process in countries like China.
It can be read together with his "Democracy and the Rule of Law", which addresses the question of why governments act or do not act according to laws, and interprets the rule of law as a strategic choice of actors with powerful interests (rather than as an exogenous constraint on politicians), and concludes that the rule of law emerges when no group is strong enough to dominate the others and political actors seek to resolve their conflicts by recourse to law.
Unfortunately, Adam Przeworski is later on obsessed with math, statistics, graphs, and aggregate analysis instead going deeper into specific political culture, which is yet another sad example of how mathematical academics continues to ruin more economists and political scientists (States and Markets: A Primer in Political Economy, 2003). The point is, applied mathematics and statistics concern with correlation, social scientists concern with causation. Mathematics and statistics are good tools, but social scientists are not technicians. If all they can do is applying mathematics and statistics without institutional analysis or policy analysis, they are in a wrong career.
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