How Does Democracy Cause Growth?

Recent empirical work has established that 'democracy causes growth'. In this paper, we determine the underlying institutions which drive this relationship using data from the Varieties of Democracy project. We sketch how incentives and opportunities as well as the distribution of political power shaped by underlying institutions, in combination with the extent of the market, endogenously form an 'economic blueprint for growth', which likely differs across countries. We take our model to the data by adopting novel heterogeneous treatment effects estimators, which allow for non-parallel trends and selection into institutional change, and run horse races between underlying institutions. We find that freedom of expression, clean elections, and legislative executive constraints are the foremost drivers of long-run development. Erosion of these institutions, as witnessed recently in many countries, may jeopardise the perpetual growth effect of becoming a liberal democracy we establish for the post-WWII period

Trust Issues?:How Being Socialised in an Autocracy Shapes Vaccine Uptake (with with Michael Bayerlein, Vanessa Boese, Scott Gates and Katrin Kamin)

The COVID-19 pandemic increased pressure on the relationship between governments andthe public, making cooperation between both actors more critical than ever. Surprisingly,there is significant variation in public compliance with health policies, especiallyregarding vaccine uptake across different countries. Based on this finding, we seek tounderstand why vaccination hesitancy varies between countries. Instead of focusing solelyon government trust and satisfaction, this research examines the impact of individuals’experiences having lived in autocratic countries on vaccine hesitancy. We derive a formalmodel of how autocratic experience and the subsequent distrust in health policies affectthe individual calculus on vaccine uptake, and test the propositions of our model in asample of 33 European countries on the micro-level. We find that autocratic experiencegravely impacts individual vaccine hesitancy. Our findings shed light on the prolongedimpact of autocratic rule on societal processes and on the roots of vaccine hesitancy, whichis not rooted in general distrust but rather a highly specific form of scepticism towardsgovernment action

Democracy Report 2022: Autocratization Changing Nature?

Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) produces the largest global dataset on democracy with over 30 million data points for 202 countries from 1789 to 2021. Involving over 3,700 scholars and other country experts, V-Dem measures hundreds of different attributes of democracy. V-Dem enables new ways to study the nature, causes, and consequences of democracy embracing its multiple meanings. The Democracy Report 2022 presents findings based on the newest edition of the V-Dem dataset (version 12). The data is the result of a vast international collaboration. We are immensely grateful to the 3,700 country experts without whose contribution V-Dem would not be possible, and to the Country Coordinators, Regional Managers, Project Managers, and Steering Committee Members for their principal roles.

Empirical Dimensions of Electoral Democracy

This paper investigates conceptual ambiguities concerning the dimensionality of democracy and what it can tell us about political development. We explore variation in components of the Electoral Democracy Index from the Varieties of Democracy Project and evaluate the strength of their relationships to democratization and democratic stability. Factor analysis of these indicators reveals three latent dimensions that have different impacts on regime change. Regimes with greater levels of civic freedoms are associated with an increased likelihood of democratic transition and stability, whereas regimes in which suffrage was most predominant are among the least democratic. The three dimensions show noteworthy trends over time and space and constitute patterns that support conclusions about \paths to polyarchy" (Dahl 1971). The results challenge the notion that electoral democracy is two-dimensional and promote, instead, civic freedoms, vote quality, and suffrage as three distinct dimensions.We recognize support by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to Wallenberg Academy Fellow Staffan I. Lindberg, Grant 2018.0144; by European Research Council, Grant 724191, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg; 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. The computations of expert data were enabled by the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at National Supercomputer Centre, Linko ̈ping University, partially funded by the Swedish Research Council through grant agreement no. 2019/3-516

Democratic Legacies: Using Democratic Stock to Assess Norms, Growth, and Regime Trajectories

While social scientists often theorize about the enduring effects of past regime characteristics, conceptual issues and data limitations pose real challenges for assessing these legacies empirically. This paper introduces a new measure of democratic stock, conceptualized as the accumulated experience of democratic rule within a polity. Using a weighted sum of past values on the Electoral Democracy Index from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute, we capture variation in past experiences with democratic institutions and practices in 199 political units from 1789 to 2019. This measure of democratic stock provides additional information on a country's political history that is not captured by its present level of democracy or regime type. To illustrate this, we highlight several cases and revisit prominent theories about democratic norms, economic growth, and democratic decline. These applications encourage scholars to think more about political outcomes as legacies of democracy.We recognize support by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to Wallenberg Academy Fellow Staffan I. Lindberg, Grant 2018.0144; by European Research Council, Grant 724191, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg; 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. The computations of expert data were enabled by the Swedish National Infrastruc- ture for Computing (SNIC) at National Supercomputer Centre, Link ̈oping University, partially funded by the Swedish Research Council through grant agreement no. 2019/3-516

Deterring Dictatorship: Explaining Democratic Resilience since 1900

Democracy is under threat globally from democratically elected leaders engaging in erosion of media freedom, civil society, and the rule of law. What distinguishes democracies that prevail against the forces of autocratization? This article breaks new ground by conceptualizing democratic resilience as a two-stage process, whereby democracies first exhibit resilience by avoiding autocratization altogether and second, by avoiding democratic breakdown given that autocratization has occurred. To model this two-stage process, we introduce the Episodes of Regime Transformation (ERT) dataset tracking autocratization since 1900. These data demonstrate the extraordinary nature of the current wave of autocratization: Fifty-nine (61%) episodes of democratic regression in the ERT began after 1992. Since then, autocratization episodes have killed an unprecedented 36 democratic regimes. Using a selection-model, we simultaneously test for factors that make democracies more prone to experience democratic regression and, given this, factors that explain democratic breakdown. Results from the explanatory analysis suggest that constraints on the executive are positively associated with a reduced risk of autocratization. Once autocratization is ongoing, we find that a long history of democratic institutions, durable judicial constraints on the executive, and more democratic neighbours are factors that make democracy more likely to prevail.We recognize support by the Swedish Research Council, Grant 2018-01614, PI: Anna Lührmann; by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to Wallenberg Academy Fellow Staffan I. Lindberg, Grant 2018.0144; by European Research Council, Grant 724191, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg; 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. The computations of expert data were enabled by the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at National Supercomputer Centre, Linköping University, partially funded by the Swedish Research Council through grant agreement no. 2019/3-516

Visualizing Authority Patterns over Space and Time

Unidimensional measures of democracy fail to account for the complex and varied nature of political systems. This article disaggregates the concept of democracy and proposes a multidimensional conceptualization to account for this variation in institutional congurations. Three theoretically informed dimensions are featured: participation, electoral contestation, and constraints on the executive. The three dimensions constitute a cube covering all regime types, in which we place countries using V-Dem data from 1789 to 2018. The cube of democracy patterns reveals several interesting observations. We trace historical patterns of democratization and autocratization, and discuss how global and regional developments take dierent paths at dierent times. Our conceptualization makes it clear that political systems with a similar score along a unidimensional scale can in fact be quite distinct. In addition, across the globe over 200 years, certain congurations of political institutions never occur. In other words, incompatible institutional pairs do not exist or are extremely short lived. This multidimensional conceptualization ultimately opens up a new eld of research in which institutional change can be studied in greater detail across countries and over time.The Research Council of Norway, grant nr. 275400, provided funding for this paper

Establishing Pathways to Democracy Using Domination Analysis

How does the order in which liberalization unfolds a ect the likelihood for a successful democratic transition? Dahl was among the rst to argue that the sequence matters for the outcome when it comes to democratization. This paper builds upon his work and empirically analyzes pathways to democracy employing the newly developed method of domination analysis. We are the rst to demonstrate three key ndings: 1) There is a clear structure in terms of order of how most episodes of liberalization from authoritarian rule develop; 2) Such sequences are di erent in key respects for failed and successful episodes of liberalization; and 3) clean election elements { in the capacity of electoral management bodies { stand out as developing earlier in episodes that successfully lead to democracy.This research project was supported by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to Wallenberg Academy Fellow Sta an I. Lindberg, Grant 2013.0166 and 2018.0144; by European Research Council, Grant 724191, PI: Sta an I. Lindberg, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation to Patrik Lindenfors, Grant 2017.0049; as well as by internal grants from the Vice-Chancellor's o ce, the Dean of the College of Social Sciences, and the Department of Political Science at University of Gothenburg

Episodes of liberalization in autocracies: a new approach to quantitatively studying democratization

This paper introduces a new approach to the quantitative study of democratization. Building on the comparative case-study and large-N literature, it outlines an episode approach that identifies the discrete beginning of a period of political liberalization, traces its progression, and classifies episodes as successful versus different types of failing outcomes, thus avoiding potentially fallacious assumptions of unit homogeneity. We provide a description and analysis of all 383 liberalization episodes from 1900 to 2019, offering new insights on democratic “waves”. We also demonstrate the value of this approach by showing that while several established covariates are valuable for predicting the ultimate outcomes, none explain the onset of a period of liberalization

Successful and Failed Episodes of Democratization: Conceptualization, Identification, and Description

What explains successful democratization? This paper makes four contributions towards providing more sophisticated answers to this question. Building on the comparative case study and large-N literature, it first presents a new approach to conceptualizing the discrete beginning of a period of political liberalization, tracing its progression, and classifying episodes by successful vs. different types of failing outcomes, thus avoiding potentially fallacious assumptions of unit homogeneity. Second, it provides the first ever dataset (EPLIB) of the full universe of episodes from 1900 to 2018, and third, it demonstrates the value of this approach, showing that while several established covariates are useful for predicting outcomes, none of them seem to explain the onset of a period of liberalization. Fourth, it illustrates how the identification of episodes makes it possible to study processes quantitatively using sequencing methods to detail the importance of the order of change for liberalization outcomes.This article is a revised version of V-Dem working paper 79 (Lindberg et al., 2018). It is the result of a collaborative effort under several years where the intellectual property is shared and authors are therefore listed in reverse alphabetic order with the exception of the last author as the originator and team leader. This research project was principally supported by European Research Council, Consolidator Grant 724191, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg; but also by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to Wallenberg Academy Fellow Staffan I. Lindberg, Grants 2013.0166 and 2018.0144; Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation to Patrik Lindenfors, Grant 2017.0049; as well as by co-funding from the Vice-Chancellor’s office, the Dean of the College of Social Sciences, and the Department of Political Science at University of Gothenburg. The authors thank participants of the V-Dem Research Conference (5/2017 and 5/2018) and the APSA conference (8/2018) for their helpful comments