A Two-Step Theory and Test of Democratic Waves *

Abstract Scholars, observing clustering in transitions to democracy, argue that democratization diffuses across borders as citizens in autocracies demand the same reforms they witness in neighboring states. We disagree. The present paper asserts that the diffusion of democracy literature rests on weak theoretical foundations and does not properly test for diffusion. We advance an alternative two-step argument to explain clustering of democratization: (1) economic shocks, which are clustered spatially and temporally, induce the breakdown of authoritarian regimes; then (2) democratic diffusion, in turn, influences whether a fallen dictatorship will be replaced by a democracy or a new autocracy. Diffusion, despite playing an important role, is insufficient to explain the clustering of transitions, notably because it cannot account for the timing of the waves. Using data on 125 autocracies from 1875 to 2004, we show that economic crises trigger authoritarian breakdowns, while diffusion determines whether the new regime is democratic or authoritarian. * Thanks t

Risk Mitigation, Regime Security and Militias: Beyond Coup-proofing

Replication files for Risk Mitigation, Regime Security, and Militias: Beyond Coup-proofing by Sabine C. Carey, Michael P. Colaresi and Neil J. Mitchell Article first published online: 17 AUG 2015 | DOI: 10.1111/isqu.1221

Replication Archive for Colaresi, Michael. 2012. ``A Boom with Review: How Retrospective Oversight Increases the Foreign Policy Ability of Democracies''

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The Benefit of the Doubt: Testing an Informational Theory of the Rally Effect

In this article I investigate the apparent tension between liberal theories that highlight the foreign policy benefits of domestic accountability and the observation that the public tends to reflexively support a leader during an international crisis. Previous theories of the process by which the public rallies around their leader tend to highlight the emotional and automatic nature of citizens responses to threats. Using a simple signaling model, I show that the political and operational circumstances that increase the probability of post hoc verification and punishment for privately motivated policy enhance the credibility of a leader s choices and transmit information on the benefits of action to the public. I derive several observable hypotheses from the informational model, linking the costliness of the signal, the presences of divided government, election years, active term limits, political insecurity, changes in freedom of information laws, and trust in government to the size of the rally in the United States. A battery of empirical tests offer strong support for the informational model and suggest that a public rally is a rational response to numerous international crisis circumstances. Observing a rally need not imply an emotional or irrational public.The author would like to thank Eric Chang, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Henk Goemans, Burt Monroe, Joachim Rennstich, Ken Bickers, Steve Chan, Tom Hammond, and Brian Silver for comments and constructive criticism. Three reviewers and the editorial staff at IO also deserve considerable thanks for contributing to the coherence of the article. As always, the remaining faults solely reflect the faults of the author.

Lessons From an Escalation Prediction Competition

Recent research on the forecasting of violence has mostly focused on predicting the presence or absence of conflict in a given location, while much less attention has been paid to predicting changes in violence. We organized a prediction competition to forecast changes in state-based violence both for the true future and for a test partition. We received contributions from 15 international teams. The models leverage new insight on the targeted problem, insisting on methodological advances, new data and features, and innovative frameworks which contribute to the research frontiers from various perspectives. This article introduces the competition, presents the main innovations fostered by the teams and discusses ways to further expand and improve upon this wisdom of the crowd. We show that an optimal modeling approach builds on a good number of the presented contributions and new evaluation metrics are needed to capture substantial models' improvements and reward unique insights. La investigacion reciente sobre la prevision de la violencia se ha centrado principalmente en predecir la presencia o ausencia de conflictos en un determinado lugar, mientras que se ha prestado mucha menos atencion a predecir los cambios en la violencia. Organizamos una competencia de prediccion para predecir los cambios en la violencia estatal tanto para el futuro cierto como para una division del analisis. Recibimos aportes de quince equipos internacionales. Los modelos aprovechan las nuevas ideas sobre el problema especifico insistiendo en los avances metodologicos, los nuevos datos y caracteristicas, asi como en los marcos innovadores que contribuyen a las fronteras de la investigacion desde diversas perspectivas. Este articulo presenta la competencia y las principales innovaciones que los equipos fomentan, y analiza maneras de expandirse y mejorar aun mas a partir de esta sabiduria del publico. Mostramos que un enfoque de modelacion optimo se crea a partir de un buen numero de aportes presentados y que se necesitan nuevas metricas de evaluacion para capturar las mejoras considerables de los modelos y para premiar las ideas unicas. Les recherches recentes sur la prevision de la violence se sont principalement concentrees sur la prediction de la presence ou de l'absence de conflit dans un lieu donne, alors que beaucoup moins d'attention a ete accordee a la prediction des evolutions de la violence. Nous avons organise un concours de predictions dont l'objectif etait de prevoir les evolutions de la violence etatique a la fois pour le futur reel et pour une partition test. Nous avons recu des contributions de 15 equipes internationales. Les modeles concernes tirent profit de nouveaux renseignements sur le probleme cible en insistant sur les progres methodologiques, sur de nouvelles donnees et caracteristiques et sur des cadres innovants contribuant a elargir les frontieres des recherches de divers points de vue. Cet article presente le concours et les principales innovations proposees par les equipes et aborde les moyens d'etendre et d'ameliorer cette sagesse de la foule. Nous montrons qu'une approche optimale de la modelisation repose sur bon nombre des contributions presentees et que de nouvelles metriques d'evaluation sont necessaires pour saisir les ameliorations substantielles des modeles et recompenser les idees uniques

Machine Learning Human Rights and Wrongs: How the Successes and Failures of Supervised Learning Algorithms Can Inform the Debate About Information Effects

This repository contains replication materials for the paper, "Machine Learning Human Rights and Wrongs: How Supervised Learning Using Texts Can Inform the Debate about Changing Standards of Human Rights" in Political Analysis

Governments, Informal Links to Militias and Accountability

Replication archive for Carey, Sabine, Michael Colaresi and Neil Mitchell. Forthcoming. "Governments, Informal Links to Militias and Accountability." Journal of Conflict Resolution