Democracy-at-Risk: Estimate Stability and Vulnerability of Democracy

• In Event: Regime Type

Abstract

What causes democratic regression and consolidation? The previous studies examine economic development and shocks, inequality, and international factors to explain democratic backsliding. These studies usually provide point estimates for the conditional mean of democratic indexes, and other variables considered causal factors, assuming the distribution of risks around the estimation is normally distributed. However, the approach ignores the possibility that the upside and downside of democratic risks are uneven. I investigate democratic regression risks and their drivers in a large sample of advanced and emerging market economies. To investigate Democracy-at-risk, I employ quantile regressions to focus on tail risks for democratic regression and consolidation. This empirical strategy allows us to quantify the chance of a very high or low shift of democracy indexes when the tail risks develop differently from average outcomes. I find that across most countries, upside democracy risks - democratic consolidation - have generally fallen over time when its GDP per capita increases.

Author

• Kenya Amano, University of Washington