andrea cassani - does a line make a difference. testing robustness with alternative regime...

8/4/2019 Andrea Cassani - Does a Line Make a Difference. Testing Robustness With Alternative Regime Classification.

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Does a line make a difference?

Testing robustness with alternative regime classification.

Abstract

The paper is organized as follows. In the first paragraph, a short review of the main issues thatscholars face when dealing with the operationalization of the notion of democracy will serve tointroduce the puzzle that this work would like to address: the proliferation of measures ofdemocracy and the uncertainty they raise. In the second paragraph, the two most frequently usedindexes of democracy will be described and some of the political regime classifications drawn onthose continuous measures will be presented. On their basis, the results of an article picked from thelong-standing debate on democracy and development will be re-tested. The analysis will contributeto reflect on the concrete effects of decisions concerning the categorization of the regime variable.

Introduction. The measurement of democracy, how and how many.

Since the publication of Dahls seminal work in 1971, the notion ofpolitical democracy seemed tohave achieved a clear and specific meaning. A democracy is a political regime characterized byhigh levels of both contestation and inclusion. Unfortunately the almost universal agreement of theacademic community on this definition has not brought about a similar agreement on how to dealwith democracy in empirical research. On the contrary, the debate on the conceptualization andmeasurement of democracy has always been heated and presumably will never end.Many puzzles still hinder the path. Among them, two major issues come immediately at stake,which refer respectively to the breadth and to the relative position of this notion. As a consequenceof the decisions taken with respect to those and a number of further issues such as the selection ofthe indicators and of the re-aggregation rules (Munck and Verkuilen, 2002) a plurality ofmeasurement solutions finds room.Concerning the conceptual breadth of the notion, the main distinction is between a minimalist and asubstantive view of democracy (Morlino, 2003). The former focuses only on the institutions andprocedures of a political regime, while the latter tends to take into account also the outcomes that apolitical regime produces. Generally speaking, the appropriateness of each of these views largelydepends on the research question under examination. Still, despite of the risk of identifying too fewattributes, minimalist definitions tend to better suit the aim of clearly isolating causal processes; thatis why they are more frequently used by the literature (Clark et al., 2009).Whatever option a scholar might prefer, he will face nonetheless a second, more fundamental issue,which concerns the position that democracy should occupy within the broader spectrum of politicalregimes. The point is whether to consider democracy as the pole of a simple dichotomy or as the

extreme of a continuum along which each regime can be ideally assigned a specific position, i.e. adegree. Even a glance at the literature would be enough to realize that there is neither agreement norultimately an hard and fast rule for preferring the former or the latter conception. We can easily findboth authors which favor a graded approach to the conceptualization of democracy such as Dahl,for instance, which defines the concept of Polyarchy as the end of a scale which serves as a basisfor estimating the degree to which various political systems approach this theoretical limit (1971)or Bollen and Jackman (1985) which consider democracy always a matter of degree and authorswhich reject a graded approach as analytically stultifying (Sartori, 1984) and adopt a dichotomousclassification because democracy, they argue, is a natural zero point (Przeworski et al., 1996). Atthe conclusion of an interesting work on this topic, Collier and Adcock (1999) claims that theiranalysis does not allow to take a specific position in favor of one or the other. Given the lack of a

universal rule, they opt for a commonsensical pragmatic guideline. Accepting the fact that theadequate conceptualization of democracy will always depend on the research purposes butrecognizing that whatever conceptual decisions is a real choice that should be explicitly justified.


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During the last decades, following the thrilling worldwide democratic trend that Huntington hasdescribed with the successful metaphor of the third wave of democratization (1991), the interesttoward democracy and democratization has dramatically increased. As a consequence, manyresearchers have matched against the troublesome task of measuring democracy. For a long time,say approximately until the middle of the 90s, the main methodological concerns referred to the

previous issues. Approaching the end of the 20th

century a more skeptical approach to the actualoutcome of many recent transitions to democracy has risen into the debate. An increasing number ofanalysts recognized that, rather than representing a simple general shift towards democracy, thethird wave has shaped a more complex international system, and that a political gray zone betweendemocracy and dictatorship has emerged (Carothers, 2002). This awareness resulted in many newclassificatory proposals in order to better take into account this unusual heterogeneity, and toinclude these new intermediary types of political regime into a comprehensive analyticalframework. These attempts use to work on continuous measures as a basis, along which two ormore cut-off points are fixed and a correspondent number of regime categories are drawn. In otherwords, scholars attention shifted from the dichotomy-versus-continuum dispute to the questionhow to go from degrees to types.

Quite surprisingly, however, this task has received little systematic attention so far. Apparently,most of the literature seems to regard such a decision as basically pragmatic and arbitrary, as it wasfor the previous issues. Unfortunately, when applied to the study of democracy-related phenomena,such arbitrariness casts doubts on the very validity of a researchs empirical results. More than to itsadvancement, the proliferation during the last years of these alternative regime classifications seemsto have contributed to the mess of the debate. This raised a increasing skepticism and need forclarity. In a recently published article, Matthijs Bogaards (2010) makes a first attempt to explore theconsequences of the lack of consensus on a common analytical framework of the regime variable.In order to demonstrate the importance of regime classification, the author investigates howapparently harmless changes in the thresholds along a continuous measure of democracy may affectempirical results.

Persuaded of the appropriateness of such an effort, this paper aims at repeating the exerciseproposed by Bogaards on an article by Larry Diamond about the relationship between democracyand development. Given the age of the article, which was published in 1992, this can be theoccasion for both an update and a test of the robustness of his results. Diamonds analysis will berepeated according to a few alternative classifications of political regimes recently proposed by theliterature. Since all of them have been drawn one of two very common indexes of democracy, theFreedom in the World and the Polity, a brief description of these measures is a necessarypreliminary step of the analysis.

Indices and typologiesThe number of indices of democracy elaborated by the literature during the last decades is quitelarge, but most of them are ad hoc. They suit the purposesinevitably limited in geographical andhistorical scope of specific research projects, then they usually do not provide other researchersand students with a tool easy to handle for further inquiries. Among them, Freedom in the Worldand Polity represent an exception.The Freedom in the World index has been originally elaborated by Raymond Gastil1 andsubsequently developed by Freedom House. It is a continuous measure of democracy, ranging from0 to 7, where 0 represents the highest degree of freedom and 7 the lowest. The overall score is theresult of the simple average between the scores of the two attributes it is composed of: PoliticalRights (PR) and Civil Liberties (CL). The score of each component is computed according to a list

of questions (ten for PR and fifteen for CL), each of them being assigned 0 (very bad) and 4 (very

1 A direct description of the original structure is available in Inkeles Alex (ed.), On measuring democracy: Itsconsequences and concomitants, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1991.


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good) points. Whatever score a country get (out of 40 for PR and out of 60 for CL), it is thenconverted to a correspondent seven-point scale, similar to the overall one. The Political Rightsattribute covers three dimensions: electoral process; political pluralism and participation;functioning of the government. The Civil Liberties attribute covers four dimensions: freedom ofexpression and belief; associational and organizational rights; rule of law; personal autonomy and

individual rights. Freedom House explicitly assigns greater emphasis to the on-the-groundfulfillment of these rights, therefore it clearly refers to a substantive definition of democracy. Inaddition to the continuous measure, Freedom House provides two additional regime variables, onecategorical and one dichotomous. On the basis of the overall score, the former assigns a country thestatus of Free (from 1.0 to 2.5), Partly Free (from 3.0 to 5.0) or Not Free (from 5.5 to 7.0). Thelatter, in evident contrast with Freedom Houses own outcomes-oriented approach, fixes a minimalthreshold above which a country can be considered as an Electoral Democracy. An electoraldemocracy is a country that gets a subtotal score of 7 out of 12 or better for the PR subcategoryElectoral Process, plus an overall PRscore of 20 out of 40 or better, so that this category includesall the Free countries as well as some of the Partly Free ones.The Polity index has been initially created by Ted Gurr and Keith Jaggers 2 and subsequently

developed by Jaggers and Marshall within the Polity Project. Also the Polity IV (i.e. the latestversion) is a continuous measure of democracy. The overall score is calculated as the differencebetween a Democracy score and an Autocracy score, which both range from 0 to 10. As aconsequence, it is a 21-points index, ranging from -10 (as dictatorial as possible) to +10 (asdemocratic as possible). Differently from the previous index, the Polity measure corresponds to aprocedural minimalist definition of democracy. It is composed of five attributes, all of themreferring to the institutional features of a political regime. The five components are: competitivenessof political participation; competitiveness of executive recruitment; openness of executiverecruitment; constraints on the chief executive; regulation of political participation. Each attribute isassigned a score according to the performances of a country. As an example, a political regimescompetitiveness of political participation may be labeled as competitive, transitional,factional, restricted or suppressed. Each attributes score contributes a different number of

points to a countrys Democracy and Autocracy scores. As to the previous case, if in country X the political participation is considered competitive, then country X will be given 3 points for itsDemocracy score and 0 points for its Autocracy score, and so on. In addition to the continuousmeasure, a three-categories classification of political regimes is also provided by introducing twothresholds in the Polity score. A country is therefore classified as an Autocracy (from -10 to -6), asan Anocracy or mixed regime (from -5 to +5), or as a Democracy (from +6 to +10).According to an attempt of systematic assessment of existing large-N datasets on democracy byMunck and Verkuilen (2002), both Freedom House and Polity indexes present severalshortcomings. The former, has been extensively criticized for the non-availability of clear coding

rules and of disaggregated data and for its inadequate internal organization (especially the equalweighting of each attribute). The latter, while appreciated for its detailed coding rules and for theavailability of disaggregated data which allow replicability, does not provide any justification for itsquite convoluted aggregation rules and have some problems of redundancy.Still, their extended geographical and historical coverage and their annual updating make theseindexes two invaluable instruments and without any doubt the most frequently used by the recentliterature. In his work, Bogaards lists a number of alternative ways in which scholars have usedFreedom House data to construct regime typologies, approximately as much as the existing differentclassifications drawn on Polity. Tables 1 and 2 provide a selection of them.

2 For direct description of its original structure see, again, Inkeles, 1991.


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Table 1 Regime Typologies Based on Freedom House

Author(s) Categories Score Threshold(s)

Diamond, 1991

Liberal Democracy

FH

1

Competitive Pluralist 1.5 - 2

Competitive Illiberal 2.5 - 3

Semi-competitive partly Pluralist 3.5 - 4.5

Non-competitive partly Pluralist 5

Hegemonic Open 5.5 - 6

Hegemonic Closed 6.5

Freedom House, 1997Electoral Democracy

Non DemocracyPR See above

Howard & Roessler, 2006

Liberal + Electoral Democracy

PR

2

Competitive Authoritarianism 3.0 - 6.0

Closed Authoritarianism 7

Lindberg, 2006

Liberal Democracy

FH

2

Electoral Democracy 2.5 - 3.5

Electoral Authoritarianism 4

Table 2 Regime Typologies Based on Polity IV

Author(s) Categories Score Threshold(s)

Mansfield & Snyder, 2005

Democracy

POL

+7

Incoherent Regime within -6 and +6

Autocracy -7

Wade & Reiter, 2007

Democracy

DEM

within 8 and 10

Mixed Regime within 3 and 7Authoritarian 2

Zanger, 2000

Democracy

POL

+4

Anocracy within -3 and +3

Autocracy -4

Epstein et al., 2006

Full Democracy

POL

+8

Partial Democracy within +1 and +7

Autocracy 0

As we can see, authors using the Freedom in the World index use either the combined score (FH) or

the Political Rights score (PR). Similarly, authors using the Polity dataset use both the singleDemocracy score and the overall Polity score. This survey is far from complete, but it might serveas a basis for the present purported analysis. By repeatedly substituting the original regime variable(Diamond, 1991) with those alternative classifications, it will be possible to test the robustness ofthe results attained by Diamonds research, which will be presented in the next paragraph.

Development and Democracy Reconsidered: a review.Since the publication in 1959 of Lipsets seminal article Some social requisites of democracy, fewquestions in political science have been studied as extensively as the impact of socio-economicdevelopment on political democracy. Lipsets argument can easily be summarize by its own words:the more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy.During the past decades this thesis has been the object of about an hundred of increasinglysophisticated statistical tests, using a variety of development indicators and working on differently


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composed samples of countries (Cutright, 1963; Olsen, 1968; Dahl, 1971; Jackman, 1973; Bollen,1979; Bollen & Jackman, 1986; and more recently Burkhart & Lewis-Beck, 1994; Barro, 1996;Przeworski et al. 1996; Boix & Stokes, 2003). Most of them attempted to introduce somecorrections or further specifications of the original findings. Often, we should acknowledge, theseefforts did not succeed, but in fact all of them contribute to nourish the debate and to keep it alive.

Jackman (more recently followed by Huntington, 1991 and Przeworski et al., 1997) claimed that thethreshold hypothesis, according to which there is a threshold of wealth above which the impact of

economic development does not produce any further effect on democracy, fits the data much moreclosely than the linear hypothesis does. According to Burkhart and Lewis-Beck, economicdevelopment substantially improves a nations democratic prospects, but in fact the magnitude of

the effect depends on the location of that nation in the world system: as it moves from the core totheperiphery, the magnitude tends to diminish. Barro was the first to support the democracy as aluxury thesis: rich countries tend to be more democratic simply because they can afford the

negative pay-off of political freedom on economic growth. Up to now, Przeworski and colleaguescontribution probably remains the most remarkable, at least for the criticisms that followed. Theydisentangled the relationship between development and democracy by arguing that development is

pretty much irrelevant for a democratic transition to occur but it does help democracy to surviveonce it has been already established throughout some exogenous, random, cause. Of course, theresno lack of replies. Just a few years later Boix and Stokes pointed out a misinterpretation ofPrzeworski et al. results and obtained opposite outcomes by extending the same analysis to the pre-war period. More recently, Acemoglu and Robinson (2008) found no significant effect of economicdevelopment on the emergence of democracy, but a simple covariance that should be betterexplained by some omitted variable.Surprisingly or not, the idea of socioeconomic development as a requisite of democracy has

survived for some fifty years. Democracy seems to actually be more likely in more developedcountries, although we do not know why (Geddes, 1999). This last remark is far from beingirrelevant. The explanatory side of the development-and-democracy puzzle is without any doubt the

weak point of the model. For decades the debate has been dominated by the modernization theory.The basic assumptions of this theory are the existence of a strong interrelation between theeconomical, social, cultural and political dimensions and of a comprehensive developmentalprocess of which democratization represent the final stage. In very general terms, the argument goesas follows. Economic development, when accompanied by industrialization, triggers somefundamental social and organizational transformation that are crucial for democracy, such as anincrease in the resources available for investments in education, economic security, the lessening ofsocial conflict, the enlargement of the middle class (i.e. democracys natural ally, according to the

classic Aristotelian argument). At present, modernization theory remains the main reference pointof the debate. Whether we find it complete and efficacious or not, the point is that too often it has

remained in the background of the empirical works on development and democracy. Too often, inother words, such complex a process has been reduced to the mere growth of per capita income.Only by the early 90s a systematic re-discussion of the concept of development has started both inacademic and international institutions circles. Quite remarkable is the notion of humandevelopment elaborated by the economist Mahbub un Haq within the United Nations Program forDevelopment (UNDP Global Report, 1990). The aim is to re-focus scholars and policymakersattention on the ultimate target of development, that is the improvement of life. This view patentlychallenges the mainstream narrow equation between development and economic growth.Development is something more than economic growth, which should be considered as a simplemeans of enlarging peoples potential and possibilities. The most basic of them are to lead a longand healthy life, to have access to education and the resources needed for a decent standard of

living. On the basis of the notion of human development, the UNDP has elaborated a HumanDevelopment Index (HDI). This measure, which has been often criticized, is probably far frombeing the ultimate solution to the problem of measuring development. Nonetheless it may represent


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a starting point for translating the notion of human development into operative terms (as Welzel andInglehart have already started to do in their reflection on a human empowerment path todemocracy).In an early attempt to include the concept of human development into the debate ondemocratization, Diamond (1992) published an article in which he re-tested Lipsets thesis with

1990 data and on a larger sample of 152 countries by using the HDI instead of per capita income.After having recoded the Freedom House combined 13-points scale in a 7-types regimesclassification and the UNDP Index in a 5 ordinal categories (different from the usual UNDPcategorization), the author cross-tabulated these two variables. Results are quite interesting. Table 3shows a strong relationship both between high levels of development and democracy and, at theopposite pole, between low levels of development and absence of political freedoms. All the mostdeveloped countries are concentrated into the two most democratic regime types and almost all theless developed countries fall into the two less democratic categories. Moreover, an almost perfectstep pattern of association might be identified. Medium/high-HDI countries have a higherproportion of democracies than do medium-HDI countries (which actually appear scattered acrossall regime type). Medium/low-HDI countries, in turn, are less democratic than the medium-HDI

ones but are still more democratic than the low-HDI countries. The test confirms that there is astrong positive relationship between democracy and socioeconomic development, as measured bythe HDI (significant at the .0001 and with a degree of association of .77). Diamonds quite simpletest show that the improvements in the physical quality of peoples lives are more important thaneconomic development per se. Then, Diamond can rightfully reformulate Lipsets thesis as follows:the more well-to-do the people of a country, on average, the more likely they will favor, achieveand maintain a democratic system for their country (Diamond, 1992).Do these findings hold, twenty years after? How robust are they? Does a line along the regimecontinuum really make a difference for empirical results? These are the questions that the next

paragraphs analysis will try to answer.

Table 3 Human Development and Regime Type (Diamond, 1992)


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Testing the robustnessAccording to the previous questions, the task is twofold. First, I will repeat Diamonds test using2009 data. This updating is a necessary preliminary step as the article is aged and a re-assessment ofthe relationship between development and democracy in 1990 would be quite valueless. Second, Iwill re-do the analysis as many times as the alternative typologies listed above.

Before presenting the analysis, a few words on the recent corrections introduced in themeasurement of each dimension of the HDI might be needed. Health is still measured by lifeexpectancy at birth indicator. Educations measure has been recently modified as the mean yearsof schooling and the expected years of schooling. The old GDP per capita (PPP US $) wealthindicator has been replaced by the GNI per capita (PPP US $). The measurement of the overallindex is no longer the simple average of the three components, but rather the cubic root of theirsum. The categorization of the HDI variable is also changed from absolute to relative thresholds:the very high, high, medium, low, categories now correspond respectively to the first, second, thirdand fourth quartile. I will use these thresholds instead of Diamonds natural breaking points,which sounds quite an arbitrary choice3.The updating of Diamonds original test represents the key of the analysis, as on the one hand it let

us see how strong the relationship between development and democracy is today and, on the other,it is the reference point of the further tests4. The first thing to notice is the larger number ofcountries which populate the intermediate categories of political regime, where the number of

democracies (liberal and competitive pluralist) is almost identical. The new test confirms a quitestrong, but weaker than in 1990, association between very high levels of development anddemocracy and the presence of a fairly good step pattern of association. The very high HDIcategory contains an higher proportion of democratic countries than the high HDI category, whichdisplays an higher proportion of democracy than the medium HDI category that, in turn, has anhigher proportion of democracy than the low HDI category. At the opposite pole of the tablethings change. Low levels of development do not correspond to low or null levels ofdemocraticness. And even if we look into the middle, a clear relationship between development and

regime type is hardly observable. With the exception of very high levels of HDI, in each categorycountries are quite scattered across all regime types, with a slight tendency to converge toward theintermediate categories (competitive illiberal, semi-competitive, non-competitive). More precisely,whether a country has an high or a medium level of development does seem to make a (slight)difference, whether a country has a medium or a low level of development does not, as in both casesit is likely to be a semi-competitive regime. To conclude, the association between very high levelsof development and democracy notwithstanding, the relationship between development andpolitical regime today appear weaker that twenty years ago (both the tau-c, .49, and the gamma, .56are smaller than in 1990, and even smaller respectively .19 and .34 when the very highcategory is excluded from the cross-tab)5 but still working.

As from tables 1 and 2, the re-assessment of these updated results is based on three alternativestypologies drawn on the Freedom in the World index and four alternative typologies drawn on thePolity.Lets start with the Freedom Houses dichotomous variable Electoral Democracy, which may

represent the opposite of Diamond 7-categories classification. Results confirm a strong associationbetween very high levels of HD and Democracy, but shows also a similar, weaker, association

3 In the last UNDP Report an inequality-adjusted human development index (IHDI) has been proposed. The averagevalue of each HDI dimension is discounted according to its level of distributional inequality, so that the IHDI equals theHDI when there is no inequality across people but is less than the HDI as inequality rises. For a further test, it wouldalso be interesting to see how results change by using this measure, as it represents a small but significant progresstoward a more fine-grained operationalization of human development.4 All the tables used in the analysis, from Table 4 to Table 11, are in the Appendix.5 The association degree of the original test is .77, but actually Diamond does not specify what test he did. Since it is amultiple entry tabulation with ordinal categories, I presume he chose either the tau-c or the gamma test of association,then I always check for both of them.


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between low levels of HD and Non-Democracy. The Howard & Roessler and the Lindbergsclassifications are based on three categories. The first, based on the Political Rights index, tends toenlarge the hybrid type. The strong association between very high-HD and democracy holds and,similarly to Diamonds results, there is no correspondence between low-HD and authoritarianism.Quite strikingly, however, the absolute majority of high, medium and low development countries

fall into the intermediate category of regime. Then, it seems that only very high levels of HDsignificantly increase the probability of a country to be democratic. The outcome of the secondtypology, which displays quite a large authoritarian class, is similar to that of the dichotomousvariable. Additionally, we have to notice that the mode of both high-HD and medium-HD countriesis authoritarian, which seems to mean that intermediate socioeconomic performances have nopositive effect on the likelihood of a country to be at least partially democratic.All the four Polity-based typologies fix two thresholds along the continuum, but in very differentpoints. Mansfield & Snyder draw a quite large incoherent regime type. First thing to notice, thestrong association between very high-HD and democracy has no counterpart at the opposite side ofthe cross-tab. The low-HD countries are all clustered in the intermediate (78%) and democracy(22%) categories. Moreover, the simple majority of both the high-HD and the medium-HD

countries are democratic, thus provoking a low overall level of association. Even weaker (tau-c .19;gamma .33) is the association measured by using Zanger classification, where the thresholds dividethe continuum in three perfectly equal types. The development variable shows perfect step patternof association with respect to the Democracy category and, in the opposite direction, to theAnocracy class, but, quite, strikingly, the mode of each development category corresponds toDemocracy. If we exclude the countries with a very high level of HD, the association between thetwo variables under examination is almost null (tau-c .08; gamma .14). Epstein et al.s regimetypology is particularly strict in defining a country as fully democratic. In this case, not only theassociation between very high levels of development and democracy holds, but it is also possible toobserve a fair correspondence between high-HD and democracy and, more interesting, between lowlevels of HD and autocracy (even if exactly the same percentage of low-HD, 46%, countries fall

into the hybrid category). The medium-HD category, in turn, is scattered across the three regimetypes. Despite of an only moderate overall association, it is possible to identify an increasing steppattern with respect to the democracy category and a decreasing one with respect to both the mixedand the authoritarian regime categories. Finally, although Wade & Reiter draw their regimetypology on the Politys single Democracy score, the results are almost perfectly equal to theprevious one.

ConclusionThe question of the heading can finally be addressed. Does a line make a difference? The aim of

this paper was inquiring the consequences of the proliferation and accumulation over time ofalternative typologies of political regime. The comparison between the results obtained withDiamonds classification and those achieved throughout the other seven alternatives leads to the

following remarks. With only one exception, the association between the two variables swaysaround weak and moderate levels. All the tests confirm the existence of quite a strongcorrespondence between very high levels of development and democracy (about the 86% of thecountries with very high levels of HD are democratic). This evidence can be rightfully consideredas the responsible of the overall force of the association, as it decreases to almost null degrees whenthe tests are repeated without the very high HD category. Whether a similar correspondencebetween low levels of human development and autocracy exists or not seems to depends on how weoperationalize the latter (even if that correspondence is never particularly strong). Clear and

opposite step patterns of association can be almost always observed between HD and Democracyand between HD and ambiguous regime categories. As for high, medium and low levels ofdevelopment, in general it is possible to claim that they can hardly be associated to different


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political regimes, but not always for the same reason. According to the classification of the regimevariable, they might be grouped into either the intermediate, or the democratic or even theautocratic type.Bogaards concluded his article saying that in the recent literature on democracy anddemocratization, the regime variable is often used in a loose fashion. Th is new re-examination

shows that the empirical association between human development and democracy might be highlydependent on how an analyst goes from degrees to types. Any regime classifications yieldssometimes slight, sometimes patently different results. There is no agreement on where to draw theline in continuous measures of democracy. This paper neither provides a complete review of all theexisting alternative typologies, nor it contributes to advance any hypotheses on a best i.e.empirically neutral and theoretically correct and universal classification of political regimes.Rather it confirms once more the importance of choices made in the conceptualization andmeasurement of democracy and the way in which regime types are derived from continuousmeasures of democracy (Bogaards, 2010).


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Appendix

Table 4 Development and Democracy today using Diamond, 1991.

HDIcat

TotalVery High High Medium Low

Diamond Liberal Democracy Count 27 2 0 0 29

% within HDIcat 71,1% 5,3% ,0% ,0% 19,0%

Competitive Pluralist Count 6 9 4 2 21

% within HDIcat 15,8% 23,7% 10,5% 5,1% 13,7%

Competitive Illiberal Count 0 9 7 4 20

% within HDIcat ,0% 23,7% 18,4% 10,3% 13,1%Semicompetitive partly

Pluralist

Count 2 5 13 16 36

% within HDIcat 5,3% 13,2% 34,2% 41,0% 23,5%

Noncompetitive partly

Pluralist

Count 0 2 0 5 7

% within HDIcat ,0% 5,3% ,0% 12,8% 4,6%

Hegemonic Open Count 3 7 9 8 27

% within HDIcat 7,9% 18,4% 23,7% 20,5% 17,6%

Hegemonic Closed Count 0 4 5 4 13

% within HDIcat ,0% 10,5% 13,2% 10,3% 8,5%

Total Count 38 38 38 39 153

% within HDIcat 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0%

Table 5 Development and Democracy today using Freedom House, 1997

HDIcat


ED Non Democracy Count 5 15 21 26 67

% within HDIcat 13,2% 39,5% 55,3% 66,7% 43,8%

Electoral Democracy Count 33 23 17 13 86

% within HDIcat 86,8% 60,5% 44,7% 33,3% 56,2%

Total Count 38 38 38 39 153

% within HDIcat 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0%


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Table 6 Development and Democracy today using Howard and Roessler, 2006

HDIcat


Howard Liberal and Electoral

Democracy

Count 33 14 8 3 58

% within HDIcat 86,8% 36,8% 21,1% 7,7% 37,9%

Competitve Authoritarianism Count 5 19 23 32 79

% within HDIcat 13,2% 50,0% 60,5% 82,1% 51,6%

Closed Authoritarianism Count 0 5 7 4 16

% within HDIcat ,0% 13,2% 18,4% 10,3% 10,5%

Total Count 38 38 38 39 153

% within HDIcat 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0%

Table 7 Development and Democracy today using Lindberg, 2006

HDIcat


Lindberg Liberal Democracy Count 33 11 4 2 50

% within HDIcat 86,8% 28,9% 10,5% 5,1% 32,7%

Electoral democracy Count 0 11 12 11 34

% within HDIcat ,0% 28,9% 31,6% 28,2% 22,2%

Electoral Authoritarianism Count 5 16 22 26 69

% within HDIcat 13,2% 42,1% 57,9% 66,7% 45,1%

Total Count 38 38 38 39 153

% within HDIcat 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0%

Table 8 Development and Democracy today using Mansfield and Snyder, 2005

HDIcat


Mansfield Democracy Count 33 20 17 8 78

% within HDIcat 86,8% 54,1% 44,7% 21,6% 52,0%

Incoherent Regime Count 1 11 15 29 56

% within HDIcat 2,6% 29,7% 39,5% 78,4% 37,3%

Autocracy Count 4 6 6 0 16

% within HDIcat 10,5% 16,2% 15,8% ,0% 10,7%

Total Count 38 37 38 37 150

% within HDIcat 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0%


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Table 9 Development and Democracy today using Zanger, 2000

HDIcat


Zanger Democracy Count 33 25 24 17 99

% within HDIcat 86,8% 67,6% 63,2% 45,9% 66,0%

Anocracy Count 1 3 5 15 24

% within HDIcat 2,6% 8,1% 13,2% 40,5% 16,0%


% within HDIcat 10,5% 24,3% 23,7% 13,5% 18,0%

Total Count 38 37 38 37 150

% within HDIcat 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0%

Table 10 Development and Democracy today using Epstein et al., 2006

HDIcat


Epstein Full Democracy Count 33 17 13 3 66

% within HDIcat 86,8% 45,9% 34,2% 8,1% 44,0%

Partial Democracy Count 0 9 14 17 40

% within HDIcat ,0% 24,3% 36,8% 45,9% 26,7%


% within HDIcat 13,2% 29,7% 28,9% 45,9% 29,3%

Total Count 38 37 38 37 150

% within HDIcat 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0%

Table 11 Development and Democracy today using

HDIcat


Wade Democracy Count 33 18 13 4 68

% within HDIcat 86,8% 48,6% 34,2% 10,8% 45,3%

Mixed Regime Count 0 8 13 17 38

% within HDIcat ,0% 21,6% 34,2% 45,9% 25,3%

Authoritarian Count 5 11 12 16 44

% within HDIcat 13,2% 29,7% 31,6% 43,2% 29,3%

Total Count 38 37 38 37 150

% within HDIcat 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0%


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andrea cassani - does a line make a difference. testing robustness with alternative regime...

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