This journal uses ScholarOne Manuscripts (previously Manuscript Central) to peer review manuscript submissions. Please read the guide for ScholarOne authors before making a submission. Complete guidelines for preparing and submitting your manuscript to this journal are provided below.

Articles submitted to Democratization should be original contributions and should not be under consideration for any other publication at the same time. If an article is under consideration by another publication, or has been, or will be published elsewhere, authors should clearly indicate this at the time of submission.

All submissions should be made online at the Democratization ScholarOne site (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/fdem). New users should first create an account. Once a user is logged on to the site, submissions should be made via the Author Centre. All contributions (other than book reviews) are peer reviewed.

Authors should prepare and upload two versions of their manuscript. One should be a complete text, while in the second all document information identifying the author should be removed from the file to allow them to be sent anonymously to reviewers. When uploading files authors will then be able to title the non-anonymous version as ‘File not for review'.

Authors are asked to submit their articles presented according to the following directions, as editors will not undertake retyping of manuscripts prior to publication.

Articles should be double-spaced and with ample margins. All pages (including those containing only diagrams and tables) should be numbered consecutively. Please avoid breaking words at the end of lines.

There is no standard length for articles but 8,000 words (including notes and references) is a useful target. It is most unlikely that articles longer than 10,000 words will be published. Authors should inform the editors of the exact length of the article at the time of submission.

An abstract of up to 200 words should be added during the submission process, along with a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 10 keywords.

As no corrections, updating or additions are allowed at proof stage, authors must make a final check of their article for content, style, proper names, quotations and references. Check especially consistency of: capitalization, use of italics, hyphenation and spelling (particularly of foreign names and words). Check for missing or duplicated numbers indicating notes, and ensure full bibliographical details are given in all references.

All diagrams, charts and graphs should be referred to as figures and consecutively numbered. Tables should be kept to a minimum and contain only essential data. Each figure and table must be given an Arabic numeral, followed by a heading, and be referred to in the text. Sources should be given in full for tables, maps and figures. As artwork cannot be corrected at proof stage, please double check for accuracy, especially spelling and totals (in tables).

The reviewer's name (in capital letters) and affiliation (underlined) should appear, on separate lines, at the end of the review, ranged at the right.

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to Democratization.

Visit our Author Services website for further resources and guides to the complete publication process and beyond.