Month: October 2017

My research is primarily focused on what conditions lead a liberal democracy to transition into an authoritarian regime. My dependent variable is thus the level of democracy and the liberalism within a state. There are several different ways to measure this variable statistically. One quantitative dataset that attempts to measure this variable comes from the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project. The particular dataset I am using from the Global Attitudes Project is the report put together by Richard Wike and Katie Simmons and is entitled “Global Support for Principle of Free Expression, but Opposition to Some Forms of Speech.”[1] Despite its title, this report contains information on more than just free expression. Instead, it is a report on support for democratic values. Democratic values in this case referring to religious freedom, gender equality, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and competitive elections.[2] In order to measure this variable, the researchers polled people in 38 countries, asking “how important is ____ in our country?” where the blank spot was filled by a phrase that encapsulated the value the researchers were trying to measure. For example, when measuring support for competitive elections the researcher would ask “how important is it that honest elections are held regularly with choice of at least two parties?” to which respondents would select their belief of the level of importance.

In a large-n version of my research project I would use this dataset to measure the relative levels of support for democratic principles from country to country. I would be curious to see whether a correlation exists between the level of support the people of a country have for democracy and any of the factors, such as inequality, that have been implicated as undermining support for democracy in the academic literature. One limitation of this dataset is that it only covers 38 countries. Additionally, this dataset is just a snapshot from 2015 and, while I have found other Pew Survey’s on support for democracy, there do not appear to be other surveys by them which ask the same questions over the course of several years. This second limitation is especially important when it comes to researching a topic, such as mine, where the trend over time is important.

[1] Richard Wike and Katie Simmons, “Global Support for Principle of Free Expression but Opposition to Some Forms of Speech” Pew Research Center.

[2] Ibid.

The ideas expressed in both Francis Fukuyama’s article Democracy and the Quality of the State and Terry Lynn Karl’s Economics Inequality and Democratic Instability belong to the same broad school of thought, the domestic failure school, when it comes to analyzing democratic decline. However, these two articles capture a key division within that school of thought between those scholars, like Fukuyama, who emphasize state capacity to provide public services[1] and other scholars, like Karl, who emphasize the state’s inability to effectively combat economic inequality.[2]

In Democracy and the Quality of the State, Fukuyama emphasizes the essentiality of a state’s ability to provide public goods to its citizens to the legitimacy of that state’s form of government.[3] Throughout his article, he explores the role of an efficient bureaucracy in providing essential public goods and whether democracy is conducive to the development of just such a bureaucracy in a series of case studies.[4] Meanwhile, Karl focuses on the various ways that high levels of inequality can undermine democracy. More specifically, she emphasizes the tendency of citizens of highly unequal countries to have lower amounts of satisfaction with democracy and increased openness to authoritarianism.[5] She mainly explores this tendency in the context of Latin America, which is the most unequal continent in the world and also has seen its fair share of democratic backsliding over the years.

Both Fukuyama’s focus on state capacity and Karl’s focus on inequality inform my research by providing me with potential variables to focus in on my research. While both Karl and Fukuyama’s articles are essentially a mix of theory and case study, it is possible to look at the factors they bring up in a more systematic way. For example, I could potentially explore the relationship between the perceptions of corruption index and democratic backsliding as a way of testing the degree to which state capacity effects democratic governance. Regardless of whether I end up focusing on either of these segments of the domestic failure school of thought, they are important arguments to keep in mind as I continue my research.

 

Bibliography:

Fukuyama, Francis. “Democracy and the Quality of the State.” Journal of Democracy 24, no. 4 (October 10, 2013): 5–16.

Karl, Terry Lynn. “Economic Inequality and Democratic Instability.” Journal of Democracy 11, no. 1 (January 1, 2000): 149–156.

[1] Francis Fukuyama, “Democracy and the Quality of the State,” Journal of Democracy 24, no. 4 (October 10, 2013): 5–16.

[2] Terry Lynn Karl, “Economic Inequality and Democratic Instability,” Journal of Democracy 11, no. 1 (January 1, 2000): 149–156.

[3] Fukuyama, “Democracy and the Quality of the State.” 6.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Karl, “Economic Inequality and Democratic Instability.” 156.