In Volume 3 of the four-volume Democracy in Developing Countries, the authors follow a common analytical framework to trace the experiences with democratic and authoritarian rule and assess the underlying causes of democratic success and failure in ten Asian countries. Volumes 2 and 4 of the set cover Africa and Latin America. In Volume 1, Professors Diamond, Linz, and Lipset weigh the evidence from these case studies together with a wealth of other theoretical and comparative literature to present a comprehensive theory of the social, cultural, economic, and political factors that foster stable democracy. Eschewing reductionist and monocausal interpretations, they emphasize the interplay between constitutional and party structure, ethnic conflict, socioeconomic change, international constraints, political values and beliefs, and the behaviors, choices, and policies of political leaders. Both the case studies and the theoretical conclusions draw new attention to the relationship between state and society and the autonomy and vitality of social interest groups as important determinants of the democratic prospect.

The book's basic analytic assumption is that there is a distinction between state and society. "Defending the National Interest" shows that the problem for political analysis is how to identify the underlying social structure and the political mechanisms through which particular societal groups determine the government's behavior.