Browsing Faculty of Social Science / Samhällsvetenskapliga fakulteten by Author "V-Dem Institute"
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A Framework for Understanding Regime Transformation: Introducing the ERT Dataset
Maerz, Seraphine F.; Edgell, Amanda B.; Wilson, Matthew C.; Hellmeier, Sebastian; Lindberg, Staffan I. (V-Dem Institute, 2021-02)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 ... -
A General Theory of Power Concentration: Demographic Influences on Political Organization
Gerring, John; Jaeger, Jillian; Maguire, Matthew (2016)Why is the exercise of political power highly concentrated in some polities and widely dispersed in others? We argue that one persistent causal factor is demographic. Populous polities are characterized by more concentrated ... -
A Short History of Contestation and Participation
Boese, Vanessa; Wilson, Matthew (2022-01)Contestation and participation are commonly viewed as the two constituent dimensions of electoral democracy. How exactly have these two dimensions been conceptualized and measured in the literature? Are they empirically ... -
An Interactive Model of the Democratic Peace: Revisiting the Theory with Elastic Measures
Altman, David; Rojas-de-Galarreta, Federico; Urdinez, Francisco (2018)Democracies do not take up arms against each other. This axiom has attained the status of a mantra in the field of international relations. As previous research has shown, however, the truth of this statement is highly ... -
Are Carbon Dioxide Emissions Decoupled from GDP Growth in Well-functioning Democracies?
Lægreid, Ole Martin; Povitkina, Marina (2017)Empirical studies of the relationship between GDP per capita and country-level CO2 emissions tend to focus on the direct effect of per capita GDP growth, rarely taking political institutions into consideration. This paper ... -
Autocracy and Variation in Economic Development Outcomes
Knutsen, Carl Henrik (2018)I discuss and analyze the vast variation in development outcomes among autocracies, focusing on economic growth. I highlight plausible explanations of this variation pertaining to features of the leader, institutions, or ... -
Autocratic Ruling Parties During Regime Transitions: Investigating the Democratizing Effect of Strong Ruling Parties
Kavasoglu, Yaman Berker (2020-06)This study examines the role of autocratic ruling party strength in democratic transitions. While the impact of ruling party strength on regime stability is extensively studied, we know much less about when and why ruling ... -
Autocratization by Decree: States of Emergency and Democratic Decline
Lührmann, Anna; Rooney, Bryan (2020)States of emergency grant chief executives the power to bypass democratic constraints in order to combat existential threats. As such they are ideal tools to erode democratic institutions while maintaining the illusion of ... -
Autocrats and Skyscrapers: Modern White Elephants in Dictatorships
Gjerlow, Haakon; Knutsen, Carl Henrik (2017)Political leaders often have private incentives to pursue expensive and socially wasteful "white elephant" projects. Our argument highlights that weak accountability mechanisms allow autocratic leaders to more easily realize ... -
Beyond First Elections: The Importance of Consistency in the Timing of Recurrent Elections
Wilson, Matthew Charles (2016)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 ... -
Can Courts be Bulwarks of Democracy?
Staton, Jeffrey K.; Reenock, Christopher; Holsinger, Jordan; Lindberg, Staffan (2018)Independent judges are thought to promote democratic regime survival by allowing perceived violations of rules limiting arbitrary power to be challenged non-violently in a fair setting, governed by transparent rules. Yet, ... -
Characterizing and Assessing Temporal Heterogeneity: Introducing a Change Point Framework, with Applications on the Study of Democratization
Hermansen, Gudmund Horn; Carl Henrik, Knutsen; Håvard Mokleiv, Nygård (2019)Various theories in political science point to temporal heterogeneity in relationships of interest. Yet, empirical research typically ignores such heterogeneity or employs fairly crude measures to evaluate it. Advances in ... -
Choosing from the Menu of Manipulation: Explaining Incumbents’ Choices of Electoral Manipulation Tactics
van Ham, Carolien; Lindberg, Staffan I. (2016)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 ... -
Civil Society and Post-Independence Democracy Levels
Grahn, Sandra; Lührmann, Anna (2020-01)The role of civil society for the consolidation of democracy is contested. Some argue that Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) are important “schools of democracy” and may foster democratic consolidation. Others emphasize ... -
Civil Society, Party Institutionalization, and Democratic Breakdown in the Interwar Period
Cornell, Agnes; Møller, Jørgen; Skaaning, Svend-Erik; Lindberg, Staffan I. (2016)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 ... -
Clientelism, Public Goods Provision, and Governance
Lo Bue, Maria C.; Sen, Kunal; Lindberg, Staffan I. (2021-07)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 ... -
Constraining Governments: New indices of vertical, horizontal and diagonal accountability
Lührmann, Anna; Marquardt, Kyle L.; Mechkova, Valeriya (2017)Accountability - constraints on the government’s use of political power - is one of the cornerstones of good governance. However, conceptual stretching and a lack of reliable measures have limited cross-national research ... -
Cui Bono? Business Elites and Interstate Conflict
Wig, Tore; Dahlum, Sirianne; Knutsen, Carl Henrik; Magnus, Bergli Rasmussen (2020-08)We address how regime supporters affect war-making by re-opening a classic debate on business elites and their influence on states' conflict behavior. Imperialist theories contend that business elites encourage executives ... -
Democracy Aid Effectiveness: Variation Across Regime Types
Lührmann, Anna; McMann, Kelly; van Ham, Carolien (2017)Large-N studies suggest that democracy aid is effective, while multiple small-N investigations call such findings into question. This paper accounts for this contradiction and significantly improves our understanding of ... -
Democracy and Corruption: A Global Time-Series Analysis with V-Dem Data
McMann, Kelly M.; Seim, Brigitte; Teorell, Jan; Lindberg, Staffan I. (2017)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 ...