Browsing by Author "Lindberg, Staffan I."

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A Framework for Understanding Regime Transformation: Introducing the ERT Dataset
(V-Dem Institute, 2021-02) Maerz, Seraphine F.; Edgell, Amanda B.; Wilson, Matthew C.; Hellmeier, Sebastian; Lindberg, Staffan I.; V-Dem Institute
Gradual processes of democratization and autocratization have gained increased attention in the literature. Assessing such processes in a comparative framework remains a challenge, however, due to their under-conceptualization and a bifurcation of the democracy and autocracy literatures. This article provides a new conceptualization of regime transformation as substantial and sustained changes in democratic institutions and practices in either direction. This allows for studies to address both democratization and autocratization as related obverse processes. Using this framework, the article introduces a dataset that captures 680 unique episodes of regime transformation (ERT) from 1900 to 2019. These data provide novel insights into regime change over the past 120 years, illustrating the value of developing a uniﬁed framework for studying regime transformation. Such transformations, while meaningfully altering the qualities of the regime, only produce a regime transition about 32% of the time. The majority of episodes either end before a transition takes place or do not have the potential for such a transition (i.e. constituted further democratization in democratic regimes or further autocratization in autocratic regimes). The article also provides comparisons to existing datasets and illustrative case studies for face validity. It concludes with a discussion about how the ERT framework can be applied in peace research.
Are Swing Voters Instruments of Democracy or Farmers of Clientelism? Evidence from Ghana
(2010-06) Lindberg, Staffan I.; Weghorst, Keith R.; QoG Institute
This paper is one of the first to systematically address the question of whether strength of ethnic identity, political parties’ candidates campaign strategies, poverty, or evaluation of clientelism versus collective/public goods, determines who becomes persuadable voters (swing voters) in new democracies. It brings together three of the major research streams in comparative politics – the literatures on development, democracy, and political clientelism – to properly situate the swing voter as – potentially – the pivotal instrument of democracy and antidote to the public goods deficit in failed developmental states. Secondly, it contributes with a new and more adequate way of conceptualizing and measuring swing voters. Thirdly, it brings the use of count regression models to the study of swing voters and voting behavior in general. Finally, the paper conducts an empirical analysis using a unique data set from a survey conducted ahead of Ghana’s 2008 elections. The results show that while constituency competitiveness, poverty, education, and access to information impact on swing voting much as expected, the role of politicians’ performance in provision of collective and public goods plays a much larger role than the existing literature makes us expect.
Beyond First Elections: The Importance of Consistency in the Timing of Recurrent Elections
(2016) Wilson, Matthew Charles; Lindberg, Staffan I.; V-Dem Institute
Is the regularity of elections a requisite for political stability? Scholars have empirically examined a number of features regarding elections in new democracies, including frequency, alternation, and orderliness, but little work has considered the potential impacts of consistency in the intervals in which they occur. Notwithstanding, predominant conceptualizations of democracy require that governments hold elections at regular intervals. This study examines the extent to which the regularity of the intervals in which elections occur a↵ects political stability. Using newly released data from the Varieties of Democracy project, we estimate a model predicting internal armed conflict based on the pattern of previous elections. We argue that consistent election intervals send a valuable signal of actors’ commitment to regularly hold elections, in part by providing a focal point for coordinated actions in the future. By better specifying the multiple ways in which elections are time-dependent, the analysis contributes to a more robust consideration of the means by which elections promote power-sharing under tenuous circumstances.
Can Efficient Institutions Induce Cooperation Among Low Trust Agents?
(2013-04) Strimling, Pontus; Lindberg, Staffan I.; Ehn, Micael; Eriksson, Kimmo; Rothstein, Bo; QoG Institute
The importance of political institutions for economic growth and social well-being has been demonstrated in a number of studies. Societies in which agents trust that other agents will collaborate in establishing and maintaining efficient institutions produce more social benefits. Yet there is still no solution to the problem known as the social trap, namely how societies can establish efficient institutions when the agents lack social trust. The emerging consensus on Acemoglu & Robin-son’s model is supported by observational data but micro-level data produced in controlled circumstances are absent. To shed light on this perennial problem, a set of laboratory experiments were carried with both high and low trust agents. The main result is that when endowed with strong, socially efficient institutions at the outset, even groups of agents with low social trust are capable of using political inclusion to maintain and also to strengthen the socially efficient institutions thereby achieving collectively high-yielding outcomes. These experiments provide the first experimental support for the importance of strong institutions for developing societies.
Choosing from the Menu of Manipulation: Explaining Incumbents’ Choices of Electoral Manipulation Tactics
(2016) van Ham, Carolien; Lindberg, Staffan I.; V-Dem Institute
How do political actors choose between different tactics of electoral manipulation, and how does the context in which elections take place shape those decisions? In this paper we argue that choices for specific manipulative tactics are driven by available resource and cost considerations, as well as evaluations of the effectiveness of various tactics. We further argue that cost considerations are importantly shaped by the context in which elections take place, most notably by the level of democratization. We test our hypotheses on a complete time- series-cross-section dataset for 1506 elections in 160 electoral regimes around the world from 1974 to 2012. We find that democratization initially leads to increases in vote buying as “cheap” forms of electoral manipulation available to incumbents such as intimidation and manipulating electoral administration become less viable.
Civil Society, Party Institutionalization, and Democratic Breakdown in the Interwar Period
(2016) Cornell, Agnes; Møller, Jørgen; Skaaning, Svend-Erik; Lindberg, Staffan I.; V-Dem Institute
The relationship between the strength of civil society and democratic survival in the interwar period has been much debated. Prominent studies have questioned the existence of a positive association, arguing that the relationship is conditioned by the level of party institutionalization. This revisionist perspective has been vindicated by case studies of important European cases, in particular Germany and Italy. But due to a lack of cross-national data, neither the direct effect of civil society nor the alternative perspective has so far been subjected to a comprehensive statistical analysis. In this paper we enlist novel data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project that enable us to carry out such an assessment of all democratic spells in the interwar years. Our survival analysis demonstrates that a vibrant civil society generally contributed to democratic survival in this period and that this effect was not moderated by the level of party institutionalization.
Clientelism, Public Goods Provision, and Governance
(2021-07) Lo Bue, Maria C.; Sen, Kunal; Lindberg, Staffan I.; V-Dem Institute
It is widely believed that clientelism—the giving of material goods in return for electoral support—is associated with poorer development outcomes. However, systematic cross-country evidence on the deleterious effects of clientelism on development outcomes is lacking. In this paper we examine the relationship between political clientelism, public goods provision, and governance quality using cross-country panel data for 161 countries for the period 1900–2017. We distinguish between two manifestations of political clientelism—whether vote buying exists, and whether political parties offer material goods to their constituents in exchange for political support (non-programmatic party linkages). We find negative effects of political clientelism on development outcomes, with increases in clientelism leading to lower coverage of welfare programmes, increased political corruption, and weaker rule of law. We also find that the deleterious effects of political clientelism are mainly through non-programmatic party linkages rather than the practice of vote buying.
Democracy and Corruption: A Global Time-Series Analysis with V-Dem Data
(2017) McMann, Kelly M.; Seim, Brigitte; Teorell, Jan; Lindberg, Staffan I.; V-Dem Institute
Theory predicts democracy should reduce corruption. Yet, numerous scholars have found empirically that corruption decreases at high levels of democracy but actually increases at low levels. A key weaknesses of studies that aim to explain this inverted curvilinear relationship, however, is that they do not disaggregate the complex concept of democracy. By contrast, this working paper disaggregates democracy theoretically and empirically. Our theoretical framework shows how components of democracy affect costs and benefits of engaging in corruption and, therefore, the level of corruption overall. Whereas other studies examine only how democratic accountability imposes costs on those engaging in corruption and thus illuminate only the downward curve of the relationship, we also examine the transaction costs and political support benefits of corruption and therefore can explain the initial uptick in corruption at low levels of democracy. Using measures of democratic components from Varieties of Democracy, we examine 173 countries from 1900 to 2012 and find that freedoms of expression and association exhibit the inverted curvilinear relationship with corruption, and that judicial constraints have a negative linear relationship. Moreover, the introduction of elections and the quality of elections act jointly, but each in a linear fashion. The mere introduction of elections increases corruption, thus accounting for the upward sloping segment of the inverted curve. Once the quality of elections begins to improve, corruption decreases, resulting in the downward-sloping segment of the curve.
Democracy at Dusk?
(2017) Lührmann, Anna; Lindberg, Staffan I.; Mechkova, Valeriya; Olin, Moa; Piccinelli Casagrande, Francesco; Sanhueza Petrarca, Constanza; Saxer, Laura; V-Dem Institute
Democracy for All?
(2018) Lührmann, Anna; Dahlum, Sirianne; Lindberg, Staffan I.; Maxwell, Laura; Mechkova, Valeriya; Olin, Moa; Pillai, Shreeya; Sanhueza Petrarca, Constanza; Sigman, Rachel; Stepanova, Natalia; V-Dem Institute
Deterring Dictatorship: Explaining Democratic Resilience since 1900
(V-Dem Institute, 2020-05) Boese, Vanessa A.; Edgell, Amanda B.; Hellmeier, Sebastian; Maerz, Seraphine F.; Lindberg, Staffan I.; V-Dem Institute
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.
Economic Development and Democracy: An Electoral Connection
(2015) Knutsen, Carl Henrik; Gerring, John; Skaaning, Svend-Erik; Teorell, Jan; Maguire, Matthew; Coppedge, Michael; Lindberg, Staffan I.; V-Dem Institute
This study takes a new tack on the question of modernization and democracy, focused on the outcome of theoretical interest. We argue that economic development affects the electoral component of democracy but has minimal impact on other components of this diffuse concept. This is so because development (a) alters the power and incentives of top leaders and (b) elections provide a focal point for collective action. The theory is tested with two new datasets – Varieties of Democracy and Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy – that allow us to disaggregate the concept of democracy into meso- and micro-level indicators. Results of these tests corroborate the theory: only election-centered indices are correlated with economic development. This may help to account for apparent inconsistencies across extant studies and may also shed light on the mechanisms at work in a much-studied relationship.
Effective Opposition Strategies: A Foundation for Improved Quality of Government
(2010-11) Weghorst, Keith R.; Lindberg, Staffan I.; QoG Institute
Electoral Democracy and Human Development
(2015) Gerring, John; Knutsen, Carl Henrik; Skanning, Svend-Erik; Teorell, Jan; Coppedge, Michael; Lindberg, Staffan I.; Maguire, Matthew; V-Dem Institute
This study attempts to reconcile competing positions in the debate over whether democracy improves human development by showing that some aspects of democracy – but not others – affect human development. Specifically, we argue that the “electoral” aspect of democracy improves human development while aspects related to citizen empowerment do not (or scarcely so). Likewise, composite indices of democracy bear only a weak relationship to human development, especially if they do not take the mutual dependence between electoral components into account in their aggregation procedures. We argue, finally, that public policies serve as a key causal mechanism in this relationship. Electoral competition incentivizes politicians to provide public goods and services, and these, in turn, save lives. This set of hypotheses is tested in a more rigorous fashion than has hitherto been possible. First, we enlist a new dataset compiled by the CLIO Infra project that measures mortality – infant mortality, child mortality, and life expectancy – for most sovereign countries over the course of the twentieth century. Second, we draw on a new political institutions dataset – Varieties of Democracy (V- Dem) – that provides highly differentiated measures of democracy, measured annually for most sovereign countries from 1900 to the present. Third, we apply a diverse set of empirical tests including fixed effects, lagged dependent variables, first-difference, system GMM, and instrumental variables. Considered together, these tests mitigate concerns about causal identification.
Establishing Pathways to Democracy Using Domination Analysis
(2020) Edgell, Amanda B.; Boese, Vanessa A.; Maerz, Seraphine F.; Lindenfors, Patrik; Lindberg, Staffan I.; V-Dem Institute
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.
Experts, Coders, and Crowds: An analysis of substitutability
(2017) Marquardt, Kyle L.; Pemstein, Daniel; Sanhueza Petrarca, Constanza; Seim, Brigitte; Wilson, Steven Lloyd; Bernhard, Michael; Coppedge, Michael; Lindberg, Staffan I.; V-Dem Institute
Recent work suggests that crowd workers can replace experts and trained coders in common coding tasks. However, while many political science applications require coders to both and relevant information and provide judgment, current studies focus on a limited domain in which experts provide text for crowd workers to code. To address potential over-generalization, we introduce a typology of data producing actors - experts, coders, and crowds - and hypothesize factors which affect crowd-expert substitutability. We use this typology to guide a comparison of data from crowdsourced and expert surveys. Our results provide sharp scope conditions for the substitutability of crowd workers: when coding tasks require contextual and conceptual knowledge, crowds produce substantively dierent data from coders and experts. We also find that crowd workers can cost more than experts in the context of cross-national panels, and that one purported advantage of crowdsourcing - replicability - is undercut by an insucient number of crowd workers.
Explaining the Homogeneous Diffusion of Covid-19 Policies among Heterogenous Countries
(V-Dem Institute, 2020-08) Sebhatu, Abiel; Wennberg, Karl; Arora-Jonsson, Stefan; Lindberg, Staffan I.; V-Dem Institute
The need for non-pharmaceutical interventions aimed at curtailing the spread of infectious diseases depends crucially on country-specific demographic and public health situations. However, the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic saw an almost homogeneously rapid adoption of such interventions across otherwise heterogeneous countries. We analyze the adoption of disease-transmission interventions in the OECD countries, and find that they are only weakly predicted by standard epidemiological indicators (confirmed infections, deaths, intensive care capacity) but strongly predicted by standard indicators in the literature on diffusion of interventions (number countries adopting the same policy; in particular, the number of proximate countries). We also examine whether the level of democracy in a given country influences the speed at which it adopts such interventions. We provide insights for research on international policy diffusion and the emerging strand of research pondering the political consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Exploring the Impact of Political Regimes on Biodiversity
(2020-03) Zizka, Alexander; Rydén, Oskar; Edler, Daniel; Klein, Johannes; Aronsson, Heléne; Perrigo, Allison; Silvestro, Daniele; Jagers, Sverker C.; Lindberg, Staffan I.; Antonelli, Alexandre; V-Dem Institute
National governments are the main actors responsible for mapping and protecting their biodiversity, but countries differ in their capacity, willingness, and effectiveness to do so. We quantify the global biodiversity managed by different regime types and developed a tool to explore the links between level of democracy and other key socio-economic variables with the number of natural history specimens registered within country boundaries. Using this tool, distinct and previously unknown patterns emerge around the world, that urge for increased collaboration between the natural and social sciences to further explore these patterns and their underlying processes.
Gender Diversity on High Courts
(2017) Arrington, Nancy; Bass, Leeann; Glynn, Adam; Staton, Jeffrey K.; Delgado, Brian; Lindberg, Staffan I.; V-Dem Institute
Increasing the diversity of political institutions is believed to improve the quality of political discourse and, subsequently, the quality of political outcomes. Moreover, the presence of diverse officials in positions of power signals the openness and fairness of political institutions. These benets of diversity should be particularly acute in the judiciary, where judges are tasked with the symbolically and substantively powerful duty of interpreting and defending constitutional values. Extant scholarship suggests that well-designed appointment process can promote diversity without explicitly gendered goals, much less quotas. If correct, these proposals raise the possibility of promoting greater diversity without having to resolve politically charged debates about quotas. Yet, scholars disagree about the effects of particular design choices. Worse, estimating causal effects of institutions in observational data is particularly difficult. We develop a research design linked to the empirical implications of existing theoretical arguments to evaluate the effect of institutional change on the gender diversity of peak courts cross-nationally. Speciffically, we consider the effect of an increase (or a decrease) in the number of actors involved in the appointment process. We find mixed results for any existing claim about the role of appointment institutions play in increasing diversity. Yet we also find that any institutional change seems to cause an increase in the gender diversity of peak courts.
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.