Regimes of the World (RoW): Opening New Avenues for the Comparative Study of Political Regimes

Classifying political regimes has never been more difficult. Most contemporary regimes hold de-jure multiparty elections with universal suffrage. In some countries, elections ensure that political rulers are - at least somewhat - accountable to the electorate whereas in others they are a mere window dressing exercise for authoritarian politics. Hence, regime types need to be distinguished based on the de-facto implementation of democratic institutions and processes. Using V-Dem data, we propose with Regimes of the World (RoW) such an operationalization of four important regime types - closed and electoral autocracies; electoral and liberal democracies - with vast coverage (almost all countries from 1900 to 2016). We also contribute a solution to a fundamental weakness of extant typologies: The unknown extent of misclassification due to uncertainty from measurement error. V-Dem's measures of uncertainty (Bayesian highest posterior densities) allow us to be the first to provide a regime typology that distinguishes cases classified with a high degree of certainty from those with "upper" and "lower" bounds in each category. Finally, a comparison of disagreements with extant datasets (7%-12% of the country-years), demonstrates that the RoW classification is more conservative, classifying regimes with electoral manipulation and infringements of the political freedoms more frequently as electoral autocracies, suggesting that it better captures the opaqueness of contemporary autocracies

Self-Censorship in Authoritarian States: Response bias in measures of popular support in China

The study of popular support for authoritarian regimes, and the comparative study of political attitudes, has long relied on the assumption that survey respondents provide truthful answers on surveys. However, when measuring regime support in closed political systems there is a distinct risk that individuals are less than forthright due to fear that their opinions may be made known to the public or the authorities. In order to test this assumption, we conducted a novel web-based survey in China in which we included four list experiments of commonly used items in the comparative literature on regime support. We find systematic bias for all four measures as a result of selfcensorship; substantially more individuals state that they support the regime with direct questioning than do when presented with our anonymous, indirect list experiments. The level of self-censorship, which ranges from 16 to 22 percentage points, is considerably higher than previously thought. Selfcensorship is further most prevalent among the wealthy, urban, female and younger respondents. These findings indicate that prior studies that have found high levels of support for the Chinese regime using these particular measures likely overestimate the true level of support. Further, crossnational studies which compare popular support across regime type may be systematically biased if responses are not subject to the same level of falsification across regime types.For helpful comments, we thank Oscar Almen, Nicholas Kerr, Pierre Landry, Staffan I. Lindberg, Ellen Lust, Kyle Marquardt, Sven Oskarsson, Daniela Stockmann, Katrin Uba, and Samantha A. Vortherms, and Vincent Wen for translation. We are further grateful to Gälöstiftelsen for financial support for data collection. Marcus Tannenberg also wishes to acknowledge support from the Swedish Research Council, Grant 439-2014-38, PI: Pam Fredman, Vice-Chancellor, University of Gothenburg, Swede

On the Road to Better Governance. The “Middle Class Particularism” and Quality of Government

This thesis merges two large bodies of literature – that concerned with the effect of regime type on institutional quality, and research on the middle classes’ effects on economy and society at large. With the purpose of providing an answer to: How the size of the middle class affects Quality of Government, and if the size of middle class is a determinant for democracy’s impact on Quality of Government? I provide a theoretical framework that outlines a “middle class particularism” in terms of their demand of Quality of Government, which differentiates the middle class from both the rich and the poor. I argue that their demand – driven by low future discount rates, expectations on the state, their mitigating role between the upper and lower class, and by their values – interacts differently with the supply side in democracies and autocracies, because of the regime type’s different institutional natures. In this first large-N study on the relationship between the middle class and Quality of Government, I employ a novel operationalization of the middle class – that capture those who can afford to purchase a car, a significantly expensive non-essential item, from which an estimation of the elite is deducted. The results indicate that the size of the middle class is a strong predictor of Quality of Government in democratic countries, but not so in autocracies. Additionally the empirical findings show only weak support for an interaction effect, between the level of democracy and the size of the middle class, on Quality of Government

On the Road to Better Governance: The "Middle Class Particularism" and Quality of Government

This paper merges two large bodies of literature – that concerned with the effects of regime type on institutional quality, and research on the middle classes’ effects on the economy and society at large – with the purpose of providing an answer to: How the size of the middle class affects Quality of Government, and if the size of middle class is a determinant for democracy’s impact on Quality of Government? I provide a theoretical framework that outlines a “middle class particularism” in terms of their demand of Quality of Government, which differentiates the middle class from both the rich and the poor. I argue that their demand – driven by low future discount rates, expectations on the state, their mitigating role between the upper and lower class, and by their values – interacts differently with the supply side in democracies and autocracies, because of the regime type’s different institutional natures. In this first large-N study on the relationship between the middle class and Quality of Government, I employ a novel operationalization of the middle class – that capture those who can afford to purchase a car, a significantly expensive non-essential item, from which an estimation of the elite is deducted. The results indicate that the size of the middle class is a strong predictor of Quality of Government in democratic countries, but not so in autocracies. Additionally the empirical findings show only weak support for an interaction effect, between the level of democracy and the size of the middle class, on Quality of Government

Regimes In the World (RIW): A Robust Regime Type Measure based on V-Dem

Classifying political regimes has never been as difficult as in this day and age. Most regimes in the world now hold de-jure multiparty elections with universal suffrage. Yet, in some countries these elections ensure that political rulers are – at least somewhat – accountable to the electorate whereas in others they are a mere window dressing exercise for authoritarian politics. Hence, regime types need to be distinguished based on the de-facto implementation of democratic rules. To this end, researchers increasingly turn to expert-coded data sets such as the new Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset. Using V-Dem data, we propose an operationalization of four important regime types – closed and electoral autocracies; electoral and liberal democracies – with vast coverage (almost all countries form 1900 to 2016) and precision. Our new Regimes in the World (RIW) measure includes uncertainty estimates to identify countries in the grey zone between regime types and account for inter-coder disagreement. In cases of disagreement with other datasets (7-12% of the cases), we classify regimes with severe electoral manipulation and infringements of the political freedoms more frequently as electoral autocracies than other datasets, which suggests that our measure captures the opaqueness of contemporary autocracies better.For helpful comments, we thank Philip Keefer, Beth Simmons, Valeriya Mechkova and participants of the 2017 V-Dem Research Conference, where an earlier version of this paper was discussed. This research project was supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Grant M13-0559:1, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to Wallenberg Academy Fellow Staffan I. Lindberg, Grant 2013.0166, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; by European Research Council, Grant 724191, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; as well as by internal grants from the Vice-Chancellor’s office, the Dean of the College of Social Sciences, and the Department of Political Science at University of Gothenburg. We performed simulations and other computational tasks using resources provided by the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at the National Supercomputer Center in Sweden, SNIC 2016/1-382 and 2017/1-68. We specifically acknowledge the assistance of In-Saeng Suh at CRC and Johan Raber at SNIC in facilitating our use of their respective systems

Self-censorship of regime support in authoritarian states : Evidence from list experiments in China

The study of popular support for authoritarian regimes has long relied on the assumption that respondents provide truthful answers to surveys. However, when measuring regime support in closed political systems there is a distinct risk that individuals are less than forthright due to fear that their opinions may be made known to the public or the authorities. In order to test this assumption, we conducted a novel web-based survey in China in which we included four list experiments of commonly used items in the comparative literature on regime support. We find systematic bias for all four measures; substantially more individuals state that they support the regime with direct questioning than when presented with our indirect list experiments. The level of self-censorship, which ranges from 24.5 to 26.5 percentage points, is considerably higher than previously thought. Self-censorship is further most prevalent among the wealthy, urban, female and younger respondents

Claiming the right to rule: regime legitimation strategies from 1900 to 2019

Governments routinely justify why the regime over which they preside is entitled to rule. These claims to legitimacy are both an expression of and shape of how a rule is being exercised. In this paper, we introduce new expert-coded measures of regime legitimation strategies (RLS) for 183 countries in the world from 1900 to 2019. Country experts rated the extent to which governments justify their rule based on performance, the person of the leader, rational-legal procedures, and ideology. They were also asked to qualify the ideology of the regime. The main purposes of this paper are to present the conceptual basis for the measure, describe the data, and provide convergent, content, and construct validity tests for new measures. Our measure of regime legitimation performs well in all these three validation tests, most notably, the construct validity exercise which explores commonly held beliefs about leadership under populist rule

Regime Legitimation Strategies (RLS) 1900 to 2018

In this paper we introduce new expert-coded measures of regime legitimation strategies for 179 countries in the world from 1900 up until 2018 that are comparable across time and space. Country experts have rated the extent to which the government promotes or references its performance, the person of the leader, rational-legality, and ideology in order to justify the regime in place. With regards to ideology, the experts are further asked to categorize the ideology of the regime as nationalist, communist/socialist, conservative/restorative, religious, and/or separatist. The main purpose of this paper is to describe and validate the data against expectations on claims from case studies as well as with existing regime type classifications. We show that experts do understand and can be employed to code legitimation claims. Not only do we document historical shifts in legitimation claims, but the measures also pick up recent trends, such as, an increased emphasis of the leader in countries such as Russia, Turkey, Cambodia over the last decades, and more recently also in India and the Philippines; as well as recent increases in legitimation claims based on both conservative and nationalist ideologies the European countries Serbia, Hungary and Poland, which also have experienced autocratization in recent years.This research project was supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Grant M13-0559:1, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to Wallenberg Academy Fellow Staffan I. Lindberg, Grant 2013.0166, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; as well as by internal grants from the Vice-Chancellor’s office, the Dean of the College of Social Sciences, and the Department of Political Science at University of Gothenburg. We performed simulations and other computational tasks using resources provided by the Notre Dame Center for Research Computing (CRC) through the High Performance Computing section and the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at the National Supercomputer Centre in Sweden, SNIC 2017/1-407 and 2017/1-68. We specifically acknowledge the assistance of In-Saeng Suh at CRC and Johan Raber at SNIC in facilitating our use of their respective systems