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Democracy and Autocratization 2
Final Project Essentials: Interaction Terms
Logistics
Assignments
Agenda
- V-Dem
- Garcia-Ponce and Wantchekon
- Final Project Essentials: Interaction terms
Varieties of Democracy
Polyarchy (Dahl, 1972)
Polyarchy is about the degree of political competition
- Democracy is an ideal too tough to define
- Instead, he describes procedures that make countries more/less democratic
- Contestation and inclusiveness allow for competition over power
- Competition makes governments accountable to citizens
Polyarchy (Dahl, 1972)
Polyarchy (Dahl, 1972)
Benefits of Democracy
Causal effects of regime-type are difficult, but…
- Higher economic growth
- Lower poverty (famines)
- Fewer international conflicts
Waves of Democracy
Varieties of Democracy
- Governance characteristics scored based on expert opinion
- 25 country experts (2/3 local and 1/3 foreign)
- 500+ indicators
- Sophisticated methods of aggregating into indices and estimating uncertainty across coders
- Liberal Democracy, Electoral Democracy, Electoral Autocracy, Autocracy
Varieties of Democracy
How is governance changing?
Ongoing transitions across regions
How is governance changing?
How is governance changing?
Most deterioration seen on:
- Freedom of expression
- Clean elections
- Freedom of association
How is governance changing?
Broad trends
- Number of people living under autocracy back to 1985 levels
- Concentration of global power is shifting (BRICS+ vs G7)
- 60 countries are holding national elections this year
- 31 worsening; 3 improving
What did you find interesting?
Critiques of VDem: Little & Meng
Incumbents are losing elections
Critiques of VDem: Little & Meng
Incumbents are losing elections
Critiques of VDem: Little & Meng
Mixed evidence on attacks on journalists
Defense of VDem
Defense of VDem
Defense of VDem
Lots of new anti-NGO laws
Garcia-Ponce and Wantchekon
Why countries Democratize
- Correlation between income and democracy
- Modernization theory: wealth, education, and urbanization are associated with democratization
- Why might this be true?
In Africa, democratization after the Cold War was shaped by the level of development (urbanization) at the start of countries’ anti-colonial movements
Context
- Anti-colonial movements chose between two strategies:
- Rural insurgency
- Urban protest
- Democratization was delayed by the Cold War
- What shaped opposition movements’ choice between strategies?
- What delayed democratization during the Cold War?
Theory
Why does opposition strategy affect democratization decades later?
- Inclusion
- Organization
Mechanisms:
- Institutions
- Behaviors
Findings
Threats to inference
- Things that affect whether or not opposition uses insurgency vs protest might also affect current levels of democracy
Identification
- Covariates
- Sensitivity analysis
- Difference-in-Differences
- Leverages changes within countries over time
- Before the end of the cold war, groups look similar
- After the end of the cold war, groups trend away from each other
- Instrumental Variables
- Leverages ‘plausibly exogeneous’ variation in terrain
- Terrain predicts strategy choice
Instrumental Variable
Mechanisms: Institutions
We do not seen an impact of Post-WWII Opposition Strategy on Post-1990 Institutions
Mechanisms: Behavior
Policy Implications
- Historical social movements help understand the link between structural conditions and democratic development
- Non-violent collective action appears critical for the establishment of lasting democracy
Final Project Essentials
Interaction Terms
What is an interaction term?
- Simple linear models assume that the effect of predictors is independent of other factors
- Interaction terms allow us to estimate the difference in the slope of a predictor across unit characteristics
\[ Y_i = \alpha + \beta_1 X_{i1} + \beta_2 X_{i2} + \beta_3 X_{i1}*X_{i2} + \epsilon_i \]
Interaction Terms
What are interaction terms used for?
- Heterogeneous effects
- Difference-in-differences
Example: Continuous outcome with two binary predictors
- \(\alpha\): Intercept when \(X_{i1}\) and \(X_{i2}\) are 0
- \(\beta_1\) Slope when \(X_{i2} = 0\)
- \(\beta_2\) Difference in \(\alpha\) between \(X_{i2}=0\) and \(X_{i2}=1\)
- \(\beta_3\) Difference in \(\beta_1\) between \(X_{i2}=0\) and \(X_{i2}=1\)