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We argue that cross-national variability in homicide rates is strongly influenced by state history. Populations living within a state are habituated, over time, to settling conflicts through regularized, institutional channels rather than personal violence. Because these are gradual and long-term processes, present-day countries composed of citizens whose ancestors experienced a degree of "state-ness" in previous centuries should experience fewer homicides today. To test this proposition, we adopt an ancestry-adjusted measure of state history that extends back to 0 CE. Cross-country analyses show a sizeable and robust relationship between this index and lower homicide rates. The result holds when using various measures of state history and homicide rates, sets of controls, samples, and estimators. We also find indicative evidence that state history relates to present levels of other forms of personal violence. Tests of plausible mechanisms suggest state history is linked to homicide rates via the law-abidingness of citizens. We find less support for alternative channels such as economic development or current state capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assess gender gaps in attitudes to several important and distinct policy areas, including economic left–right issues, gender equality, immigration, environmentalism and traditional ‘moral issues’. Drawing on comprehensive survey data from 14 established democracies in Western Europe, we document that women have more progressive attitudes than men do on all the five attitudinal dimensions that we consider. These patterns are similar (albeit not identical) across West European countries, despite cross-country differences in political cultures and systems. We also elaborate on potential implications of our findings for other political outcomes of interest, including voting behaviour and the functioning of representative democracy, and point to avenues for future research in detailing the mechanisms that contribute to the observed gender gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We revisit the hypothesis that a Weberian bureaucracy enhances economic growth. Theoretically, we develop arguments for why such a bureaucracy may enhance growth and discuss plausible counterarguments. Empirically, we use new measures capturing various Weberian features in countries across the world, with some time series extending back to 1789. The evidence base from previous large- N studies is surprisingly thin, but our extensive data enable us to move beyond the problematic cross-country correlations used in previous studies. Hence, we conduct tests that control for country-specific characteristics while ensuring sufficient variation on the slow-moving bureaucracy variables to enable precise estimation. Our analysis suggests that previous cross-country regressions have vastly overstated the strength of the relationship. While this casts uncertainty on the proposition that there is an effect of Weberian bureaucracy on growth, our further analysis suggests that—if an effect exists—it may operate in the short term and be stronger in recent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a temporally fine-grained data set on regimes, defined as the formal and informal rules essential for selecting leaders. The data set comprises more than 2,000 regimes from 197 polities, 1789 to 2016. We highlight how the frequency of breakdowns and particular modes of breakdown have followed cyclical rather than monotonic patterns across modern history. The most common breakdown modes, overall, are coups and incumbent-guided regime transformations. Furthermore, we report robust evidence that low income, slow or negative growth, and intermediate levels of democracy predict a higher likelihood of regime breakdown. Yet, by running change-point analysis we establish that breakdown risk has cycled substantively across periods of modern history, and the aforementioned explanatory factors are more clearly related to breakdown during certain periods. When disaggregating different breakdown modes, low income is related to, for example, breakdown due to popular uprisings, whereas intermediate democracy levels clearly predict coup-induced breakdowns and incumbent-guided transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While some scholars suggest that rural groups contribute to welfare state expansion, we highlight their incentives to restrain it. The ability of rural groups to achieve this preference hinges on their power resources, but also on the electoral system. We propose that in majoritarian systems, rural groups can often veto welfare legislation. In proportional systems this is less feasible, even for resource-rich groups. Instead, agrarian groups sometimes accept welfare legislation in return for other policy-concessions in post-electoral bargaining. We illustrate the argument with British and Norwegian historical experiences, and test the implications using panel data from 96 democracies. We find evidence that resourceful agrarian groups effectively arrest welfare state development in majoritarian systems, but not in proportional systems. As expected, the electoral system matters less for welfare state expansion when agrarian groups are weak. The results are robust to using alternative estimators, measures, samples and model specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 FROM AUTHOR]

Political leaders often have private incentives to pursue socially wasteful projects, but not all leaders are able to pursue these interests. We argue that weaker accountability mechanisms allow autocratic leaders to more easily realize wasteful projects than democratic leaders. We focus on one particular project, skyscraper construction, where we obtain objective measures comparable across different contexts. We test different implications from our argument by drawing on a new dataset recording all buildings exceeding 150 m, globally. We find that autocracies systematically build more new skyscrapers than democracies. Furthermore, autocratic skyscrapers are more excessive than democratic ones, and—in contrast with democracies—autocracies pursue skyscraper projects to about the same extent in rural/poor and urban/rich societies. When investigating different mechanisms entailed in our argument, the link between regime type and skyscraper construction seems due in large part to stronger vertical accountability mechanisms and more open information environments in democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue that autocratic regimes are no less likely than democracies to adopt old-age pensions, although autocratic programs are less universal in their coverage. Our theoretical argument focuses on the strong incentives that autocratic regimes have for enacting and maintaining such programs to ensure regime survival. Autocratic pension programs can be considered club goods that (a) are targeted to critical supporting groups and (b) solve credible commitment problems on promises of future distribution, thereby mitigating probability of regime breakdown. We test three implications from the argument, drawing on a novel dataset on welfare state programs and including 140 countries with time series from the 1880s. First, we find that autocracies are no less likely than democracies to have old-age pension programs. But, second, autocracies have less universal pension programs than democracies. Third, pension programs effectively reduce the probability of autocratic breakdown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies of democratic developments are limited to the period after World War II. However, political regimes varied according to different aspects of democracy long before the establishment of modern liberal mass democracies. We come down strongly in favor of collecting disaggregate and fine-grained historical data on democratic features. Based on a distinction between competition, participation, and constraints on the executive, we discuss previous attempts at historical measurement and address the specific challenges that pertain to scoring political regimes in, first, the “long 19th century” and, second, medieval and early modern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incumbents voluntarily leaving office after losing elections is a hallmark of democracy. Hence, the most prominent binary democracy measure (Democracy–Dictatorship/Alvarez–Cheibub–Limongi–Przeworski [DD/ACLP]) requires observed alternation in power to score regimes democratic. Such “alternation rules” may, however, lead to underestimating democracy’s effect on economic growth. As strong economic performance reduces the probability of incumbents losing democratic elections, young democracies with high growth may falsely be coded dictatorships; their popular governments have yet to lose an election. We identify the expected bias using different tests, for example, when following Przeworski et al.’s advice to re-estimate relationships after re-coding multi-party regimes without alternation as democratic, or when employing differences in information about alternation from different time points to contrast original DD estimates with our “real-time” DD estimates. We present resembling arguments on how alternation rules may bias democracy’s estimated relationships with civil war onsets and coups, but find fewer empirical indications of biases here. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses methodological problems related to operationalizing substantive definitions of democracy. The article argues that index-constructors need to be particularly conscious of measurement level issues. If not, their indexes may face severe reliability and validity problems, which in turn may bias empirical analyses utilizing the indexes. The article focuses particularly on the "effective democracy" measure developed by Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel. The measure has been used by Inglehart and Welzel in several studies, particularly for empirically testing hypotheses deduced from their version of modernization theory. These tests have generated very strong results in favor of the theory. The article is sympathetic to Inglehart and Welzel's goal of capturing "substantive" rather than "formal" democracy, but is critical of the specific measure proposed. The measure has several unfortunate theoretical and distributional properties; the empirical scores generated by the measure are often highly misleading. Empirical analysis suggests the index is biased, and that rich, Western countries are particularly favored. Utilization of the measure in statistical analysis may therefore lead to false inferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]