Includes bibliographical references and index.

Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy is a comparative survey of some of what Moore considers the major/most indicative world economies as they evolved out of pre-modern political systems into industrialism. As the title suggests, Moore is not ultimately concerned with explaining economic development so much as exploring why modes of development produced different political forms that managed the transition to industrialism and modernization. Why did one society modernize into a "relatively free," democratic society (by which Moore means England) while others metamorphosed into fascist or communist states? His core thesis is that in each country, the relationship between the landlord class and the peasants was a primary influence on the ultimate form of government the society arrived at upon arrival in its modern age.