Democratic Advantage Research Articles

California’s 2021 Gubernatorial Recall: Field Notes

In 2021, the second attempt in California history to recall a governor ended in a resounding victory for the Democratic incumbent. Unlike the recall of Governor Gray Davis in 2003, auspicious political conditions helped enable Gavin Newsom’s survival; these included a large Democratic advantage in voter registration and an all-mail-ballot election that reduced participation costs. Turning points in the process included an extension of the signature-gathering deadline and the emergence of a polemical candidate who helped energize Democratic voters. These developments re-exposed flaws in the state’s recall process and have prompted calls to reform the qualification procedures and the dual ballot format, which permits the election of a potentially anti-majoritarian replacement who receives a small fraction of the plurality vote.

Great Expectations: The Democratic Advantage in Trade Attitudes

Why is trade with some countries more popular than with others? Linking the literature on regime type and trade cooperation with the literature on trade attitudes, the authors argue that the domestic political institutions and cooperative reputations of foreign states condition the willingness of the public and policy elites to deepen trade cooperation. Using survey experiments fielded on the American public and a unique sample of US foreign economic policymakers, the authors show that respondents prefer trade with democracies over trade with nondemocracies by large margins. Further, they find that this democratic advantage stems from a strong expectation that democracies will be more reliable and consistent cooperation partners. This study provides one of the first direct and causally identified tests of the mechanisms underlying theories of the political economy of regime type and international cooperation. Although the article focuses on the case of trade attitudes, the argument is general, suggesting that support for cooperation in other issue areas is conditional on similar factors.

Uttarakhand Separate State Movement from the Eye of Activists, Scholars, and Press

The call for separate Uttarakhand state has persisted a question in the hilly districts of Uttar Pradesh ever since in the year of 1938 when it was initially rose at Srinagar Garhwal.But it had not been able to appeal significantly consideration of intellectuals. This is principally because up until recently i.e., mid of1994 when the protestor was launched proceeding a large scale, the claim itself did not stimulate considerably eagerness. The Uttarakhand Kranti Dal which originated in existence in1979 with the definite object of demanding a new small statehood continued a declining organisation as per it could not found its democratic advantage over the area. In fact, Uttarakhand converted a subject for the political parties only subsequently a serious protest was hurled in 1994-95 in the aftermath of the implementation’ of the Mandal commission formula of 27 percent reservation for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) by the,the then chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav Government of Uttar Pradesh. It is perchance for this cause that not much effort has seemed on the Uttarakhand separate state movement. Maximum of the records, data and articles that had been available in the books, research journals, magazines, and newspapers contract with the ecological complications of the hill area, mainly the well-known Chipko and the Tehri Dam agitations concerning the anxieties of people.

Institutionalizing the autocratic penalty away: fiscal rules, autocracy, and sovereign financial market access

AbstractThe “democratic advantage” in access to credit markets has been vigorously researched. Recent research has found that this “autocratic disadvantage” can be partly countered by other factors. However, this research agenda has largely ignored an increasingly important type of institution of direct importance for national fiscal policy, fiscal rules. This article argues that fiscal rules alleviate the “autocratic disadvantage” in sovereign bond market access. This argument is tested on a dataset on fiscal rules and sovereign bond issuing data covering 121 countries from 1990 to 2015. The results provide substantial evidence in favor of the argument, autocracies with fiscal rules face no disadvantage in bond market access and might even be more likely to issue new government bonds than democracies.

The democratic (dis)advantage: The conditional impact of democracy on credit risk and sovereign default

AbstractMany have argued that democracies are able to make credible commitments to repay their debts and consequently enjoy higher sovereign credit ratings. In contrast to this expectation, I argue that the advantage of democracies in credit ratings is conditional on the countries' level of financial vulnerability and adjustment needs. Because democracies have more diffuse decision‐making and are more accountable to the public, they encounter greater difficulty than autocracies in passing unpopular economic adjustment measures. Thus, I argue that democracies with high debt levels and low foreign reserve assets experience worse credit outcomes, whereas democracies with low vulnerability experience more positive outcomes. In a sample of up to 96 developing countries, I show that democracies have worse credit ratings and CDS Spreads and are more likely to default than their autocratic counterparts when foreign reserves are low relative to external debt. Notably, I also show that large debt burdens increase credit risk mainly in more democratic countries. I further test the causal pathway of the democratic advantage by constructing democracy scores of “market‐friendly” and “adjustment‐difficulty” democracy, finding that democracy worsens debt outcomes due to adjustment difficulty. These findings help to revise and clarify the causal logic surrounding the democratic advantage hypothesis.

The Death of the Democratic Advantage?

AbstractInternational relations scholarship has posited multiple pathways through which democracies accrue advantages in world politics. These range from enhanced warfighting capabilities to sovereign borrowing capacity to more constructive cooperation with like-minded regimes. A series of crises over the past generation, however, have called these advantages into question. This paper re-examines the key conceptual pillars underlying the democratic advantage in world politics. Scholars have posited that democracies possess inherent advantages in credible commitment mechanisms and public goods provision. The rise of populism has eroded these underlying advantages. Furthermore, the rise of China threatens to hamper the network effects that enhance democratic flourishing at the global level. Whether the democratic advantage is real and sustainable should be one of the defining political science research programs of this century.

Whom do we learn from? The impact of global networks and political regime types on e-government development

This study investigates the impact of global networks on e-government development and the role of political regime types in e-government diffusion through international networks. We built a unique social network dataset that covers 148 countries for the years between 2003 and 2014. Our network dataset is rooted in two assumptions: 1) international organizations serve as peak organizations for international policy networks, 2) public managers who participate in international e-government conferences held by the UN and OECD work as boundary spanners. Our empirical evidence suggests that countries well embedded in global e-government networks receive ideas for public sector innovation from international conferences and show a high level of e-government development. However, political regime types serve as implicit and explicit filters of ideas for boundary-spanning activities. Ties between countries with the same political regime improve e-participation and ties between autocracies have a positive impact on online service delivery. However, ties between countries with different political regimes have no impact on e-participation and a negative influence on online service delivery. Thus, we debunk the democratic advantage perspective by demonstrating that democracies and autocracies have different ideas of and purposes for e-government.

Democracy, autocracy, and sovereign debt: How polity influenced country risk on the peripheries of the global economy, 1870–1913

This article tests the influential democratic advantage hypothesis – that democratic governments have historically borrowed more cheaply than autocratic governments – in the context of the first financial globalization, from circa 1870 to 1913. We construct indicators of political regime types, then regress government bond spreads of 27 independent capital-importing countries on them. In contrast with the mainstream literature, the results suggest that democracies were associated with higher country risk. Our findings indicate that autocratic regimes had a significant advantage: democracies paid 5.7% more on their debt than autocracies, controlling for several financial and political variables. This gap is the equivalent of 35.4% of the negative effect defaults had on credit costs. Our conclusions hold when allowing for different definitions of political regime type and bond spreads. The correlations identified also find support in qualitative evidence, according to which creditors favored autocracies for being politically more stable than democracies.

The partisan consequences of liberation mentality: Ruling party support in Zimbabwe across space and time

In autocratic-leaning countries, the level of genuine public support for ruling parties and reasons driving it are often unclear. While such parties often rely on violence, electoral manipulation, and corruption to help maintain power, maintaining legitimate popularity is the ideal. Parties that emerged from national liberation struggles and other extraordinary events are thought to have developed strong branding and organizational structures. This paper tests the determinants of ruling party identification among Zimbabweans through seven geo-coded rounds of Afrobarometer data. First, genuine ruling party support is estimated to be exaggerated in public opinion surveys, but not insignificant. The ruling party’s base of support is centered in rural areas that experienced the greatest concentration of guerrilla activity during the liberation war. Respondents from the liberation generation are also more likely to support the ruling party, and view the party as tied to nationalism. The liberation war generated and solidified ruling party stronghold areas through democratic advantages such as nationalistic branding and robust party organization structures as well as autocratic tools such as the capture of traditional leaders, politicization of the military, and the use of violence against dissidents.

Активизация ресурса исторической памяти в современной политике

The article contains analysis of the reasons why the resource of the historical memory of civil societies and power elites is beginning to be actively used in the modern foreign and domestic policy of many countries, including Russia. The article describes the positive consequences of such a construction of political motivations, as well as the risks associated with the weakening of the influence of ideologies on political processes. From the author’s point of view, the interest of the subjects of modern politics in using the resource of historical memory is due to the distrust of citizens and elites to the motivational potential of ideologies growing in the modern world and in Russia. It is also caused by the desire to increase the “human capital” of democratic politics and reserve advantages for the national state in controlling the policy of implementing national interests. At the same time, the author argues, the active motivation of politics, both internal and external, by the arguments of historical memory can generate no less risks for its progress today than those that were generated by the dominance of “classical” ideologies in it.

Presidential party affiliation and electoral cycles in the U.S. economy: Evidence from party changes in adjacent terms

Unique evidence presented in this study challenges previous findings about presidential politics and business cycles. Prior studies find strong evidence for a Democratic economic growth advantage of about 1.8% per year over the course of a term but only weak evidence for a pre- election surge in growth for incumbent Presidents of either party. This study finds a much smaller Democratic advantage and strong evidence for a pre-election growth surge for Republican Presidents relative to Democratic Presidents. The novelty of these results is attributable to the use of repeated party-change reversals in adjacent terms for identification in place of binary changes in isolated terms separated by as much as a half-century in prior studies. We find a strongly partisan Federal Reserve effect on growth as well. Results are insensitive to an extensive battery of robustness checks.

Contingent Advantage? Sovereign Borrowing, Democratic Institutions and Global Capital Cycles

AbstractHow do domestic and global factors shape governments’ capacity to issue debt in primary capital markets? Consistent with the ‘democratic advantage’, we identify domestic institutional mechanisms, including executive constraints and policy transparency, that facilitate debt issuance rather than electoral events. Most importantly, we argue that the democratic advantage is contingent: investors’ attention to domestic politics varies with conditions in global capital markets. When global financial liquidity is low, investors are risk-averse, and political risk constrains governments’ capacity to borrow. But when global markets are flush, investors are risk-tolerant and less sensitive to political risk. We support our argument with new data on 245,000 government bond issues in primary capital markets – the point at which governments’ costs of market access matter most – for 131 sovereign issuers (1990–2016). In doing so, we highlight the role of systemic factors, which are under-appreciated in much ‘open economy politics’ research, in determining access to capital markets.

The Blue Wave: Assessing Political Advertising Trends and Democratic Advantages in 2018

ABSTRACTThis research offers a post-mortem on political advertising in 2018, providing important context for 2018’s “blue wave.” In a majority of US House of Representatives races, there were more pro-Democratic than pro-Republican ads, including in the most competitive contests. The one theme that united pro-Democratic advertising was health care, which was mentioned in nearly three of every five Democratic ads in the fall campaign. Contrary to the narrative that television is declining, a record number of television ads aired in the 2018 midterms, whereas digital spending still constituted a small percentage of overall advertising spending for most candidate campaigns. Finally, there was a healthy volume of outside-group spending in 2018, with “dark-money” groups increasing their involvement—especially in support of Democratic candidates.

Consolidated democracy advantage: political instability and sovereign spreads in the EU

We expose the way the market evaluates internal political risk and instability in democratic polities by analysing the determinants of sovereign spreads of EU member states over the course of the past two decades. Our analysis builds on the “democratic advantage” argument which suggests democracies enjoy preferential treatment on the international market of sovereign debt because of their better ability to make credible commitments. We suggest that, when it comes to the market’s evaluation of internal political instability and risk in democratic polities, there actually exists a “consolidated democracy advantage”. In times of political instability, older and more consolidated democracies pay less of a premium on their debt than their younger and less consolidated counterparts. In other words, the market indeed views the commitment of consolidated democracies with long track records of democratic competition and survival as something qualitatively different than the commitment of new democracies with short track records.

Sovereign debt: election concerns and the democratic disadvantage

We re-examine the concept of 'democratic advantage' in sovereign debt ratings when optimal repayment policies are time-inconsistent. If democratically elected politicians are unable to make credible commitments then default rates are inefficiently high, so democracy potentially confers a credit market disadvantage. Institutions that are shielded from political pressure may ameliorate the disadvantage by adopting a more farsighted perspective. Using a numerical measure of institutional farsightedness obtained from the Global Insight Business Risk and Conditions database, we find that the observed relationship between credit-ratings and democratic status is strongly conditional on farsightedness. With myopic institutions, democracy is associated with worsened credit ratings on average by about 3 investment grades. With farsighted institutions there is, if anything, a democratic advantage.

Democracy’s comparative advantage: Evidence from aggregated trade data, 1962–2010

Abstract Scholars have long debated the nexus between political institutions and economic outcomes. The thesis of democratic advantage has been under careful scrutiny and empirical evidence is notoriously inconclusive. One topic that has drawn extensive scholarly attention is democratic institutions as a source of comparative advantage in international trade. Using a new data set that covers around 140 countries from 1962 to 2010, we find that on average, democratic countries have the comparative advantage in exporting differentiated products, which reflects lower transaction costs in trade and higher economic complexity. Echoing literature on electoral autocracy, we also make the distinction between different subtypes of authoritarian regimes. Similarly, authoritarian countries with electoral institutions have the comparative advantage in exporting differentiated products relative to other authoritarian countries, though the magnitude is much smaller and inconsistent over time. Our results are robust to a large set of control variables and multiple model specifications. In sum, our paper provides new insights into the relationship between democracy and trade and complements existing literature on the effect of authoritarian institutions on economic development.

Political Institutions, Contract Intensity, and the Comparative Advantage of Democracy

Scholars have long debated the nexus between political institutions and economic outcomes. The thesis of democratic advantage has been under careful scrutiny and empirical evidence is notoriously inconclusive. One topic that has drawn extensive scholarly attention is democratic institutions as a source of comparative advantage in international trade. Using a new data set that covers around 140 countries from 1962 to 2010, we find that on average, democratic countries have the comparative advantage in exporting differentiated products, which reflects lower transaction costs in trade and higher economic complexity. Echoing literature on electoral autocracy, we also make the distinction between different subtypes of authoritarian regimes. Similarly, authoritarian countries with electoral institutions have the comparative advantage in exporting differentiated products relative to other authoritarian countries, though the magnitude is much smaller and inconsistent over time. Our results are robust to a large set of control variables and multiple model specifications. In sum, our paper provides new insights into the relationship between democracy and trade and complements existing literature on the effect of authoritarian institutions on economic development. Note: This is the first-submission version to World Development.

Not all built the same? A comparative study of electoral systems and population health

Much literature depicts a worldwide democratic advantage in population health. However, less research compares health outcomes in the different kinds of democracy or autocracy. In an examination of 179 countries as they existed between 1975 and 2012, advantages in life expectancy and infant health appear most reliably for democracies that include the principle of proportional representation in their electoral rules. Compared to closed autocracies, they had up to 12 or more years of life expectancy on average, 75% less infant mortality, and double the savings in overall mortality for most other age groups. Majoritarian democracies, in contrast, did not experience longitudinal improvements in health relative to closed autocracies. Instead their population health appeared to be on par with or even superseded by competitive autocracies in most models. Findings suggest that the principle of proportional representation may be good for health at the national level. Implications and limitations are discussed.

Transparent motives: democratic advantage in international credit markets

Do democracies have an advantage in international credit markets? According to Schultz and Weingast (2003), they do, as democratic governments can be held accountable and, thus, their commitments to pay are more credible. However, this argument does not apply to much of the developing world, in which potential lenders are often not domestic and lack the ability to punish the sovereign through domestic political institutions. Saiegh (2005) argues that there is no ‘democratic advantage’ in developing states, as he finds developing democracies more likely to reschedule foreign debt than non-democracies. In this paper, we also find that democratic governments are more likely to default. However, we argue that this ability to reschedule loans precisely is a democratic advantage. Democratic countries are more likely to default because they can do so without fear of being punished by global credit markets; and when they do, developing democracies are also more likely to receive credit following default. The source of this democratic advantage is transparency, which makes democratic governments credible, not only in their promises to pay, but also in their claims about their ability to pay.

Politics and population health: Testing the impact of electoral democracy

This study addresses questions of whether and why electoral democracies have better health than other nations. After devising a replicable approach to missing data, we compare political, economic, and health-related data for 168 nations collected annually from 1960 through 2010. Regression models estimate that electoral democracies have 11 years of longer life expectancy on average and 62.5% lower rates of infant mortality. The association with life expectancy reduces markedly after controlling for GDP, while a combination of factors may explain the democratic advantage in infant health. Results suggest that income inequality associates independently with both health outcomes but does not mediate their associations with democracy.