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abstract:In this article, the authors discuss and analyze how regime type and state capacity shape the abilities and incentives of political leaders to respond to covid-19. They suggest that a complementary relationship exists between democracy and state capacity, both in terms of mitigating the adverse consequences of the pandemic, such as deaths, and the honest reporting of these consequences. Using a recent global data set on officially reported covid-19 deaths and estimated deaths based on excess mortality, the authors present evidence that supports different implications from their argument. Empirically, democracies have much higher officially reported death tolls than do autocracies, a result driven by underreporting in autocracies. In high-capacity states, democracies have fewer covid-19 deaths than do autocracies. State capacity generally seems to mitigate both deaths and underreporting, but these relationships are stronger in democracies. Countries that combine democracy with high state capacity experience fewer covid-19 deaths and provide more accurate tolls of the pandemic’s consequences.

abstract:The authors develop a perspective of locally embedded welfare state development to explain how relatively weak national political actors can, nonetheless, shape national policy over time by pursuing local reforms. Empirically, the authors assess their argument by using municipality-level representative shares, data on noncontributory pension reforms, roll-call votes from parliament, and archival material from early twentieth-century Norway, in which several local governments introduced noncontributory old-age pensions before Norway adopted a national scheme. The authors show, first, how nationally underrepresented but highly institutionalized socialist parties with geographically concentrated support introduced local pensions. Over time, these parties thus shaped the possibility space for national reform, effectively locking the national policy agenda into a pension system preferred by the socialists—namely, noncontributory pensions. Citing high municipality-debt pressures in their constituencies, bourgeois politicians from districts with local pensions eventually supported and promoted national-level pension reform. This support, in turn, spurred the cross-class alliance required to establish a national noncontributory pension system.

This article describes and discusses the new generation of methodological responses to measuring democracy and related issues generated by Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). V-Dem is distinct in several regards in addition to its unique level of disaggregation, by the combination of: historical data extending back to 1900 and for a large selection among them to 1789 for many countries in the world; use of multiple, independent coders for each evaluative question; inter-coder reliability tests incorporated into a custom designed Bayesian item-response theory measurement model; provision of confidence bounds for all point estimates associated with expert-coded questions as well as for all indices; multiple indices reflecting varying theories of democracy; fully transparent aggregation procedures; and that all data are made freely available, including original coder-level judgments (exclusive of any personal identifying information).

Abstract:While a large literature suggests an important role for political parties in development, this article is the first attempt to layout and test a comprehensive theory connecting parties to economic growth. The authors argue that strong parties broaden the constituencies to which policymakers respond and help politicians solve coordination problems. These features help to ensure better economic management, public services, and political stability. And this, in turn, enhances economic growth. Drawing on a novel measure of party strength from the Varieties of Democracy data set, the authors test this theory on data drawn from more than 150 countries observed annually from 1901–2010. They identify a sizeable effect that is robust to various specifications, estimators, and samples. The effect operates in both democracies and autocracies, and is fairly stable across regions and time periods.

While a large literature suggests an important role for political parties in development, this article is the first attempt to layout and test a comprehensive theory connecting parties to economic growth. The authors argue that strong parties broaden the constituencies to which policymakers respond and help politicians solve coordination problems. These features help to ensure better economic management, public services, and political stability. And this, in turn, enhances economic growth. Drawing on a novel measure of party strength from the Varieties of Democracy data set, the authors test this theory on data drawn from more than 150 countries observed annually from 1901–2010. They identify a sizeable effect that is robust to various specifications, estimators, and samples. The effect operates in both democracies and autocracies, and is fairly stable across regions and time periods.

Abstract:Do elections reduce or increase the risk of autocratic regime breakdown? This article addresses this contested question by distinguishing between election events and the institution of elections. The authors propose that elections stabilize autocracies in the long term but at the price of short-term instability. Elections are conducive to regime survival in the long run because they improve capacities for co-optation and repression but produce short-term instability because they serve as focal points for regime opposition. Drawing on data from 259 autocracies from 1946 to 2008, the authors show that elections increase the short-term probability of regime failure. The estimated effect is retained when accounting for the endogeneity of autocratic elections; this finding is critical, since some autocrats may or may not hold elections because of perceived effects on regime survival. The authors also find that this destabilizing effect does not operate in the long term. They find some, although not as strong, evidence that elections stabilize autocratic regimes in the medium to long term, despite their destabilizing immediate effects. These temporal effect patterns are present for both executive and legislative elections, and they are robust to using different measures, control variable strategies, and estimation techniques. In line with expectations, both effect patterns are much clearer for multiparty autocratic elections than for completely uncontested elections.

Do elections reduce or increase the risk of autocratic regime breakdown? This article addresses this contested question by distinguishing between election events and the institution of elections. The authors propose that elections stabilize autocracies in the long term but at the price of short-term instability. Elections are conducive to regime survival in the long run because they improve capacities for co-optation and repression but produce short-term instability because they serve as focal points for regime opposition. Drawing on data from 259 autocracies from 1946 to 2008, the authors show that elections increase the short-term probability of regime failure. The estimated effect is retained when accounting for the endogeneity of autocratic elections; this finding is critical, since some autocrats may or may not hold elections because of perceived effects on regime survival. The authors also find that this destabilizing effect does not operate in the long term. They find some, although not as strong, evidence that elections stabilize autocratic regimes in the medium to long term, despite their destabilizing immediate effects. These temporal effect patterns are present for both executive and legislative elections, and they are robust to using different measures, control variable strategies, and estimation techniques. In line with expectations, both effect patterns are much clearer for multiparty autocratic elections than for completely uncontested elections.

This paper surveys the literature on how democracy affects economic growth. The paper first presents descriptive statistics and brief case-descriptions to illustrate how democracy and dictatorship may affect growth. Thereafter, it evaluates five central arguments on democracy and growth, before surveying empirical studies on the relationship. Furthermore, the paper highlights critical methodological challenges, and draws implications for constructing valid models for empirical research on the topic. The review shows that there is still disagreement over whether democracy enhances growth or not. Nevertheless, in the light of more recent studies, using better methodological approaches and more data than previous studies, two trends are recognizable: first, the hypothesis that democracy reduces economic growth is refuted by recent studies; second, the hypothesis that democracy has no effect on growth, although still widespread in the academic community, seems less plausible today than it did 10 or 20 years ago. Several recent studies show that democracy has positive effects on growth, although these effects are ‘indirect’ in the sense that democracy affects growth through, for example, enhancing human capital or strengthening the protection of property rights.

This paper discusses the hypothesis that democracy hurts economic growth and development, also known as the Lee thesis, and discusses why one could expect dictatorship to be particularly beneficial for growth in the Asian context. Three general theoretical arguments in support of the Lee thesis are then presented. However, the empirical results, based on panel data analysis on more than 20 Asian countries, do not support the hypothesis that dictatorship increases economic growth in Asia. There is no significant, average effect of democracy on growth. Asian dictatorships do invest a larger fraction of their GDP than democracies, but they are worse at generating high enrollment ratios in education after primary school.