Browsing by Author "Hicken, Allen"

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Electoral Contestation: A Comprehensive Polity-Level Analysis
(2018) Gerring, John; Hicken, Allen; Weitzel, Daniel; Cojocaru, Lee; V-Dem Institute
The study of electoral contestation generally focuses on districts or regions rather than polities. We present a new dataset that measures electoral contestation through historical records of elections in sovereign and semi-sovereign polities throughout the world from 1789 to the present. We also offer a new index of contestation intended to capture multiple dimensions of this complex concept. Our second objective is to explain variation across polities and through time in electoral contestation. We argue that the degree of contestation in a polity is affected by demography, with larger polities fostering greater electoral contestation. This hypothesis is tested with a series of cross-national regression tests that employ a variety of specifications and estimators – crosssectional, fixed-effect, and instrumental variable. We find a robust association between population and contestation extending throughout the modern era.
Electoral Volatility and Regime Survival in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes
(2022-02) Kim, Wooseok; Bernhard, Michael; Hicken, Allen; V-Dem Institute
Party system institutionalization is regarded as a critical underpinning of democracies, but its role in non-democratic systems has been understudied. In this paper, we evaluate whether the concept has meaningful and perhaps unique implications for the durability of competitive authoritarian regimes. We argue that electoral volatility—the most common measure of party system institutionalization in democracies—conveys useful information in competitive authoritarian contexts by signaling the ability of the ruling party to manage the opposition, but note that it needs to be refined to be applicable to such contexts. To this end, we construct an original data set that disaggregates electoral volatility into ruling party seat change and opposition party seat volatility, and further divide opposition party volatility into Type-A and Type-B volatility. We find robust results that democratization becomes more likely when decreases in the ruling party’s seat share are accompanied by opposition party Type-B volatility. This paper demonstrates that the concept of party system institutionalization can be useful for making sense of regime dynamics even in non-democratic contexts.
Institutional Subsystems and the Survival of Democracy: Do Political and Civil Society Matter?
(2015) Bernhard, Michael; Hicken, Allen; Reenock, Christopher; Lindberg, Staffan I.; V-Dem Institute
How do two central institutional subsystems of democracy – party systems and civil society – affect the persistence of democratic regimes? Despite the ability of each of these institutions to provide sources of countervailing power that make politicians accountable and thus responsive, distributionist accounts of democratic breakdown provide few insights on how such institutions may encourage parties to reach accommodation. We argue that these institutions provide credible threats against anti-system activities that would otherwise threaten the democratic compromise. We test our argument with newly available data from the Varieties of Democracy (VDEM) project by analyzing all episodes of democratic breakdown from 1900-2001. Using a split population event history estimator, we find evidence that these institutions not only forestall the timing of breakdowns among transitional democracies but also that a strong party system is critical to setting democratic regimes on the path of consolidation.
Measuring Political Participation in Southern Europe: The Varieties of Democracy Approach
(2015) Fernandes, Tiago; Cancela, João; Coppedge, Michael; Lindberg, Staffan I.; Hicken, Allen; V-Dem Institute
Most schools of democratic theory consider political participation to have a positive impact in deepening democracy. Political participation makes democracies more accountable and freer, as well as creating more engaged, civic minded and public spirited citizens. It has been observed that in regimes where citizens lack capacity for self-organization and political engagement this contributes to a lower quality of their democratic regimes and institutions. Moreover, this connection is even more vital in democratizing settings and new democracies, like the Southern European countries of Portugal, Spain, and Greece. Research has shown that in democracies that emerged after a long experience of authoritarianism there will be a lower capacity for mobilization of citizens. Democratic regimes may became established, with the minimal requirements (freedom of the press, civil and political liberties, a functioning party system, free and fair elections), but they will have a lower quality because there will be very weak attachments of citizens to its institutions. After the euphoria of participation during the transition, desencanto (disenchantment, disappointment) settles in, estranging citizen’s from the democratic process. Contrary to older democracies, where political participation tended to grow steadily after the transition and for decades, in new democracies the high levels of participation of the transition give place to very weak levels of participation. Even more troubling, new democracies are also characterized by strong inequalities in participation, which affect especially popular groups and the poor, but also the middle classes.
Party Strength and Economic Growth
(2015-09) Bernhard, Michael; Bizzarro, Fernando; Coppedge, Michael; Gerring, John; Hicken, Allen; Knutsen, Carl Henrik; Lindberg, Staffan I.; Skaaning, Svend-Erik; V-Dem Institute
This study argues that strong parties play a critical role in fostering economic development. The theory explores how parties broaden the constituencies to which policy makers respond and help politicians to solve coordination problems. These features ensure that politicians engage in better economic management, provide productivity enhancing public services, and help ensure political (and thus policy) stability. This, in turn, should enhance economic growth. Drawing on a novel measure of party strength from the Varieties of Democracy dataset, we test this hypothesis on data from more than 150 countries, with time series extending from 1900 to 2012. We identify a sizeable and highly significant effect, and one that is robust to a variety of specifications, estimators, and samples. The effect operates in both democracies and autocracies and is fairly stable across various regions of the world and across time periods. We also provide suggestive evidence about causal mechanisms, focusing on measures of economic management, public goods, and political stability. This paper contributes to two large literatures, respectively focusing on features of political parties and on the institutional determinants of growth. While previous studies have highlighted the role of parties in improving the quality of governance such claims are usually limited in context – to democratic or authoritarian settings – and generally do not pertain to distal outcomes such as per capita GDP growth. Studies of economic development, while focused explicitly on growth, generally identify other long-run causal factors at work, e.g., geography, property rights, political constraints, colonial origins, inequality, social capital, or human capital.
The V-Dem Party Institutionalization Index: a new global indicator (1900-2015)
(2017) Bizzarro, Fernando; Hicken, Allen; Self, Darin; V-Dem Institute
Because levels of party institutionalization may affect the availability of good data, existing datasets have limited reliability and coverage. To overcome these problems, we introduce the V-Dem Party Institutionalization Index, the first global country-level index on the issue. It covers – as of May 2017 – 173 countries for 116 years (1900-2016). Its geographical coverage, timespan, and conceptual reach are larger than any existing alternative. We offer an additive index that measures the scope and depth of party institutionalization in a country every year. Scope is measured by the proportion of parties that reach a threshold of minimal institutionalization, while the linkages party establish with the masses and the elites define the depth. Exploring a set of well-known cases, we show that: the index has extensive face validity, is consistent across regime types, and is comparable to other established indicators of institutionalization.
Why Populism? How Parties Shape the Electoral Fortune of Populists
(2018) Self, Darin; Hicken, Allen; V-Dem Institute
Much of the literature on populism restricts itself to specific regional contexts. Due to this approach, theories of populism have difficulty explaining cross-regional similarities or differences (such as the prevalence of exclusive populist parties in Europe but inclusive parties in Latin America). Using cross-regional data and exploratory case studies from multiple regions, we provide evidence that the prevalence of populism in a given party system is a function of both party institutionalization and electoral institutions. The combination of these factors we term institutional hostility. In laying out our theory we identify three ways in which populist parties enter party systems and contest elections: populist entry, populist targeting and adaptation, and populist capture.