Systems of government
Is Democracy in Danger? A Quick Look at the Data
Daniel Treisman
University of California Working Paper, June 2018
Abstract:
Influential voices in academia and the media contend that democracy is in decline worldwide and threatened in the US. Using a variety of measures, I show that the global proportion of democracies is actually at or near an all-time high; that the current rate of backsliding is not historically unusual; and that this rate is well explained by the economic characteristics of existing democracies. I confirm that breakdowns tend to occur in countries that are poor, have had relatively little democratic experience, and are in economic crisis. Extrapolating from historical data, I show that the estimated hazard of failure in a democracy as developed and seasoned as the US is extremely low — far lower than in any democracy that has ended in the past. Some suggest that undemocratic public attitudes and erosion of elite norms threaten US institutions, but there is little evidence that these factors cause democratic breakdown. While deterioration in the quality of democracy in countries such as Hungary and Poland is itself cause for concern — as is the reversion to authoritarianism in Russia and Turkey — alarm about a global slide into autocracy is inconsistent with current evidence.
Demystifying the Democracy Premium: Theory and Experiments
Luca Braghieri
Stanford Working Paper, May 2018
Abstract:
Recent experimental research suggests that democratically-chosen policies foster desirable behavior more than identical policies imposed exogenously (democracy premium). In a novel experiment, I study the behavior of minorities who may be dissatisfied with the outcome of the democratic process to test whether the democracy premium is underlain by concerns for procedural legitimacy or by reciprocity. By suggesting that minorities do not exhibit a democracy premium, the experimental results support the reciprocity explanation. I develop a reciprocity theory of the democracy premium that rationalizes the results of the experiment and that may underlie the findings in the endogenous institutions literature.
Batons and ballots: The effectiveness of state violence in fighting against Catalan separatism
Joan Barceló
Research & Politics, June 2018
Abstract:
What are the consequences of police brutality in fighting against the Catalan secessionist movement? While Spanish authorities resorted to violence with the hope that forceful action would deter further support for separatism, recent studies of repression argue that state violence tends to backfire. I test these two plausible arguments in the context of non-lethal police brutality to prevent an illegal self-determination referendum. For this, I combine data of the local distribution of police violence during the referendum and the official results of the subsequent regional elections. Because police forces were not deployed randomly, I employ a difference-in-differences estimation with matching to evaluate the electoral consequences of violence. The results show no clear evidence that police brutality affected support for separatism or electoral mobilization in the areas that it was deployed. The lack of a clear effect sets an agenda for future research in the investigation of the conditions under which state violence affects dissenting movements.
Socialization or Experience? Institutional Trust and Satisfaction with Democracy among Emigrants in Different Institutional Settings
Stefan Dahlberg & Jonas Linde
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this article, we assess the explanatory power of two contrasting theories about the sources of political trust. Using a unique survey of expatriated Swedes together with two cross-country surveys, we investigate how a move from a context of high institutional quality to countries characterized by low institutional quality affects peoples’ institutional trust and satisfaction with democracy. Our analyses show that Swedes living in countries with low levels of institutional quality display significantly lower levels of political trust and support compared to the native population, demonstrating that experience of institutional quality is more important than socialization and culture. However, long-time exposure to, and socialization into, a new cultural and institutional setting triggers something like a process of resocialization, in which the difference in satisfaction and trust decreases over time. The results are robust to a wide array of specifications and statistical techniques.
Former Communist party membership and bribery in the post-socialist countries
Artjoms Ivlevs & Timothy Hinks
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the effect of former Communist party membership on paying bribes to public officials and motivations for bribery, 25 years after the fall of communist rule. Data come from a large representative survey, conducted in post-socialist countries in 2015/16. To deal with endogeneity, we instrument party membership with information on whether family members were affected by the Second World War. Instrumental variable results suggest that links to the former Communist party increase the likelihood of paying bribes today; this result applies to the former party members as well as their children and relatives. Among bribe payers, people with the party links are more likely to offer bribes as well as think that bribe payments are expected. Overall, our findings suggest that the proclivity to corruption of the former Communist party members has been transmitted through family and thus sustained over time, contributing to corruption decades after the demise of the Socialist bloc.
Mass Media and the Diffusion of Collective Action in Authoritarian Regimes: The June 1953 East German Uprising
Charles Crabtree, Holger Kern & Steven Pfaff
International Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
A growing literature attributes the rapid diffusion of domestic collective mobilization against authoritarian regimes to foreign mass media broadcasts. We examine this relationship in the context of the June 17, 1953, uprising in East Germany, the first national rebellion against communist rule in Eastern Europe. The uprising involved an extraordinarily swift and wide-ranging diffusion of antiregime collective action. Observers on both sides of the Iron Curtain attributed the revolt to Western media broadcasts, particularly news broadcasts by the Radio in the American Sector (RIAS) of Berlin. While historians have strongly endorsed this view, social scientists have never quantitatively tested it. We investigate the potential relationship between municipality-level protest events and RIAS broadcasts by exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in RIAS signal strength across East Germany. We find no evidence to support the hypothesis that RIAS caused the diffusion of protest during the uprising. Instead, our results suggest that social ties likely played an important, and underrecognized, role in the swift diffusion of antiregime collective action.
Building Nations Through Shared Experiences: Evidence from African Football
Emilio Depetris-Chauvin, Ruben Durante & Filipe Campante
NBER Working Paper, May 2018
Abstract:
We examine whether shared collective experiences can help build a national identity, by looking at the impact of national football teams’ victories in sub- Saharan Africa. Combining individual survey data with information on official matches played between 2000 and 2015, we find that individuals interviewed in the days after a victory of their country’s national team are less likely to identify with their ethnic group than with the country as a whole and more likely to trust people of other ethnicities than those interviewed just before. The effect is sizable and robust and is not explained by generic euphoria or optimism. Crucially, we find that national victories not only affect attitudes but also reduce violence: using plausibly exogenous variation from close qualifications to the African Cup of Nations, we find that countries that (barely) qualified experience significantly less conflict in the following six months than countries that (barely) did not. Our findings indicate that, even when divisions are deeply rooted, shared experiences can work as an effective nation-building tool, bridge cleavages, and have a tangible effect on violence.
Corruption and Ideological Voting
Diana Burlacu
British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines the effect of corruption on ideological voting. Linking previous studies of political corruption with theories of ideological voting, it argues that when corruption is high, voters place less importance on ideology when voting than they otherwise would. The reason for this effect is related to voters’ reduced ability to accurately perceive parties’ positions and to their low political efficacy in these contexts. Using data from ninety-seven elections from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, the study shows that in countries with high levels of corruption, voters consider ideology less in their voting decisions, partially because they face difficulties identifying parties’ ideological positions and/or they do not believe parties can implement their electoral programmes. These relationships hold even after controlling for socio-economic and political confounders and for voters’ increased likelihood of abstaining when corruption is high.
Who's There? Election Observer Identity and the Local Credibility of Elections
Sarah Sunn Bush & Lauren Prather
International Organization, Summer 2018, Pages 659-692
Abstract:
Prior research has sought to understand the rise of election observers and their consequences for outcomes such as fraud, protest, and violence. These studies are important but they overlook a significant individual-level dynamic that observers themselves care about: the effect that election observers have on local attitudes about elections. We argue that the activities of election observers can enhance elections' local credibility, but only when locals perceive observers as being both capable of detecting fraud and unbiased in that pursuit. Not all observer groups are seen as equally capable and unbiased. Evidence from a large-scale, nationally representative experiment in Tunisia supports the argument. A key finding is that observers from the Arab League — an organization criticized internationally for low-quality election observation — enhanced credibility the most because they were perceived locally as both relatively capable and unbiased.
Awakening Leviathan: The effect of democracy on state capacity
Erik Wang & Yiqing Xu
Research & Politics, May 2018
Abstract:
Recent debates over the relative importance of democracy and state capacity for human development have led to the prevailing view that a strong state must be built before the introduction of democracy. Our research challenges this “sequencing approach” in international development. Using a global panel of countries over 50 years, we document that democracy has a substantial, positive causal effect on state capacity with identification strategies that adjust for pre-treatment dynamics. The state-enhancing effect of democracy is robust to alternative measures of key variables, a large set of time-varying confounders and an instrumental variable design that leverages variation in regional democratic diffusions. Subsequent analysis suggests contestation, rather than participation, as a potential causal mechanism. Our findings contribute to the burgeoning literature on sources of state capacity in the developing world and yield practical implications for democracy assistance.