Kelly M. McMann

Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: A New Approach

InthewakeoftheColdWar,democracyhasgainedthestatusofamantra.Yetthereisnoconsensusabouthowtoconceptualizeand measure regimes such that meaningful comparisons can be made through time and across countries. In this prescriptive article, we argueforanewapproachtoconceptualizationandmeasurement.Wefirstreviewsomeoftheweaknessesamongtraditionalapproaches. Wethenlayoutourapproach,whichmaybecharacterizedas historical, multidimensional, disaggregated,and transparent.Weendby reviewing some of the payoffs such an approach might bring to the study of democracy.

A Survey of Democracy in Russia's Regions

An American political scientist and a Russian geographer, specialists in postCommunist political reform and Russian regional politics, respectively, adopt a subnational approach to democratization, measuring democracy in a standard fashion across 57 regions of Russia. They rate levels of democracy in Russias oblasts, krays, and federal cities based on the results of a survey they administered to experts on Russian provincial politics. The article presents the ranking of the regions, evaluates the survey as a means of measuring provincial democracy, and examines five possible explanations for subnational variation in democracy. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H11, H77, P16, P26. 3 figures, 4 tables, 79 references, 2 appendices.

V-Dem Codebook V6

All variables that V-Dem is compiling are included in the Codebook.

Strategies of Validation: Assessing the Varieties of Democracy Corruption Data

The authors are grateful to Nancy Bermeo, Ellen Lust, Gerardo Munck, Andreas Schedler and V-Dem colleagues for their comments on an earlier version of this paper and to Talib Jabbar and Andrew Slivka for their research assistance. This research project was supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, grant M13-0559:1, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; by the Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation to Wallenberg Academy Fellow Staffan I. Lindberg, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; by the Swedish Research Council, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden & Jan Teorell, Department of Political Science, Lund University, Sweden; and by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SES-1423944, PI: Daniel Pemstein. Jan Teorell also wishes to acknowledge support from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. We performed simulations and other computational tasks using resources provided by the Notre Dame Center for Research Computing (CRC) through the High Performance Computing section, and by the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at the National Supercomputer Centre in Sweden. We specifically acknowledge the assistance of In-Saeng Suh at CRC and Johan Raber at SNIC in facilitating our use of their respective systems.

Measuring subnational democracy: toward improved regime typologies and theories of regime change

ABSTRACT Social scientists have been limited in their work by the paucity of global time series data about subnational institutions and practices. Such data could help scholars refine regime typologies, improve theories of democratization and regime change, better understand subnational democracy, and illuminate issues of development, conflict, and governance. This article addresses the lack of data by introducing 22 subnational measures from a new dataset, Varieties of Democracy. Validity tests demonstrate that the measures’ strengths outweigh their weaknesses. The measures excel in covering all subnational levels for most countries, capturing different elements of subnational elections, and including a variety of dimensions of elections and civil liberties. The measures also offer unmatched global and temporal coverage. The article demonstrates how these strengths can provide scholars with the benefits described above.

Democracy and Corruption: A Global Time-Series Analysis with V-Dem Data

We are grateful to Lucas Flowers, Mark Patteson, and Andrew Slivka for their research assistance. This research project was supported by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Grant M13-0559:1, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to Wallenberg Academy Fellow Staffan I. Lindberg, Grant 2013.0166, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; European Research Council, Grant 724191, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; and internal grants from the Vice-Chancellor’s office, the Dean of the College of Social Sciences, and the Department of Political Science at University of Gothenburg. We performed simulations and other computational tasks using resources provided by the Notre Dame Center for Research Computing (CRC) through the High Performance Computing section and the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at the National Supercomputer Centre, SNIC 2016/1-382 and 2017/1-68. We specifically acknowledge the assistance of In-Saeng Suh at CRC and Johan Raber at SNIC in facilitating our use of their respective systems.