Introducing the MaxRange Dataset: Monthly Data on Political Institutions and Regimes Since 1789 and Yearly Since 1600
Max Rånge*, Matthew C. Wilson** and Mikael Sandberg*
Presented at the WINIR 2015 Conference in Rio de Janeiro *Halmstad University, Sweden,
[email protected],
[email protected] **West Virginia University, USA,
[email protected]
ABSTRACT The MaxRange dataset provides information on political institutions for all countries of the world going back to 1789 on a monthly and yearly basis, and to 1600 on a yearly one. The yearly dataset spanning 1600 to 2014 has over 90,000 country-year observations, and in its monthly format from 1789 has over 660,000 observations. The time-series data are at least 200 years longer than any other comparable time-series dataset on political institutions. Created by Max Rånge, the datasets aggregate specific attributes to create nominal and ordinal rankings of political regimes on a 1-100 scale (the MaxRange1 dataset) and on a 1-1,000 scale (the MaxRange2 dataset). At the same time, however, the codes for each attribute underlying the categorization of political regimes are also included. It is more detailed than any other dataset on political institutions, yielding up to 1,000 different unique combinations of institutional features. In addition to supporting a rigorous classification of democratic and nondemocratic regimes, the dataset allows researchers to exploit institutional variation and to explore alternative ways of aggregating political institutions. The MaxRange dataset on political institutions is by far the biggest and most comprehensive political regime dataset to date, and it offers several advantages compared to other available data. In particular, the availability of monthly time-series data provides greater detail and reliability to support more accurate research on political transitions.
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Introduction
North’s definition of institutions as the “rules of the game,” or more specifically, the “humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic and social interaction,” (North 1990) has been extremely influential both in economic and social sciences. An empirical interest in the relationship between institutions and political outcomes--embodied in political science by the historical institutionalist approach (Hall and Taylor 1996)--has led to a number of different datasets on political institutions. Many of the projects have attempted to classify types of regimes and document temporal changes between them. Some of the most well-known datasets on democratic institutions are the Freedom House, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EUI), the Institutional and Elections Project (IAEP), and the Democracy and Dictatorship datasets (Przeworski 1991). However, only three datasets on democracy go as far back as the early 19th century: the Polyarchy dataset by Vanhanen (Vanhanen 2003), which goes back to 1810, and the Boix, Miller, and Rosato (Boix et al. 2012) Political Regimes data (BMR) and the Polity IV dataset, both of which begin in 1800. Inspired by Robert Dahl’s (1971) conceptualization of democracy as being based on contestation and participation, the Vanhanen and BMR datasets focused on these aspects for determining whether a country was democratic in a particular year. Vanhanen constructed a democracy index by combining the share of party representatives not belonging to the largest party in the elected parliament with the rate of electoral participation (Vanhanen 1997). In the BMR dataset that runs to 2007, the authors use the same distinctions to produce a binary indicator of democracy. Unfortunately, neither Vanhanen’s Polyarchy, nor the BMR datasets, are sufficient for gauging changes in political institutions with any detail or precision. Moreover, the two databases are no longer being updated. Polity IV data, in contrast, represent all nation states with a population of more than 500,000 inhabitants starting from 1800 (Jaggers and Gurr 1995; Gurr 1974; Marshall and Jaggers 2002, 2010; Eckstein and Gurr 1975). This
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continuously updated dataset provides ordinal measures of the openness, regulation, and competitiveness of executive recruitment and political participation, as well as a measure of executive constraint. However, scholars have criticized the “democracy scale” derived from the constituent measures as being endogenously affected by conflict and regime change (Vreeland 2008). Scholars have also demonstrated that the component measures themselves do not have equal effects on the democracy score they compose, nor do they show the same amount of variation among democracies as they do autocracies (Gleditsch and Ward 1997). As a whole, there are a number of reviews and critiques of the existing datasets on democracies and democratic institutions that highlight problematic issues regarding the internal validity of the measures, conceptual inconsistency, and contextual specificity (Adcock 2001; Bollen 1993; Bollen and Paxton 1998; Casper and Tufis 2003; Collier and Adcock 1999; Munck and Verkuilen 2002; Sartori 1970). These concerns are not exclusive to datasets that focus on democracy, however, as exemplified by Wilson (2014). Whether it is operationalized as categorical or in gradations, there is a near-consensus that there needs to be a clearer focus on the specific institutions and practices by which democracies and nondemocracies are discerned. One recent project, the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project based at the University of Gothenburg and the Kellogg Institute at the University Notre Dame, has taken on the task of improving indicators of democracy through an impressive team of scientists and country experts. In addition to involving a large number of knowledgeable scholars, one of the primary benefits of V-Dem is that it aims to provide the full set of indices for each conception and component by which different forms of democracy are measured (Coppedge et al. 2015). Still, there are two issues inherent to the project that have yet to be resolved: V-Dem does not purport to cover institutions and regime types outside of democracy, and the data only go as far back as 1900. The ongoing data collection effort aims to cover most nations over the period 1900-2013 (Coppedge et al. 2015). To the extent that the historical
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processes undergirding statebuilding in the contemporary world generated institutional experimentation that had varied success, there is a need for historical time-series data that “open-mindedly” explores institutional variations, over a much longer period of time, in order to inductively generate new institutional categories and compare them to traditional deductive classifications. This is something that V-Dem recognizes, as evidenced by their use of Bayesian factor analysis to inform sub-level variables that make up indices such as freedom of expression. Nevertheless, the project’s nearly exclusive focus on distinguishing among seven high-level principles of democracy runs the risk of omitting the varieties of nondemocratic government that often precede democracy or that evade democracy altogether.1 More important, however, is the need to identify political institutions in the long-run. As Gleditsch and Ward (1997) pointed out, “[s]tudies that wish to examine democratic change by focusing on an overall measure of democracy will have to have fairly long time frames to capture the variance in democracy scores over time’’ (pg. 378). Lipset and Rokkan (1967) considered the roots and ‘junctures’ of our current political and party systems to lay in the Reformation, and in subsequent democratic and industrial revolutions. However, data are scarcely available by which to quantitatively assess their argument. Similarly, Collier and Collier (2002), Pierson (2004), and Putnam (1992) have suggested that there are institutional path dependencies, based on theory and case studies. Yet, the difference between ‘path dependence’ and ‘diffusion’ hypotheses of national institutional evolution remains unclear to political scientists, political sociologists, and aid agencies, who lack viable data to explore them. The need for historical data also resonates with political scientists who have argued in favor of taking the role of history more seriously in empirical research (Grzymala-Busse 2010; Pierson 2004; Rose and Shin 2001). Given the recognized need to identify specific institutions, to take a dynamic approach towards classifying political regimes, and to collect data over a much longer period of time, the MaxRange dataset offers to resolve some of the inherent issues and complement existing efforts. Created by Max Rånge,
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the dataset aggregates specific attributes to create nominal and ordinal rankings of political regimes on a 1-100 scale (the MaxRange1 dataset) and on a 1-1,000 scale (the MaxRange2 dataset). The data are the product of over eight years of historical research based at Halmstad University in Sweden, a project spearheaded by Max Rånge. The MaxRange dataset provides information on political institutions for all countries of the world going back to 1789 on a monthly and yearly basis, and to 1600 on a yearly one. The data cover 111 more years of monthly data and 200 more years of yearly data than most current datasets on political institutions. The monthly coverage is an especially attractive feature of the data, as many political events and changes can occur over the course of a year that are frequently omitted from yearly data. Countries that were thought to constitute the “Arab Spring” evidence the way in which countries in transition can alternate between several varieties of interim forms or backslides from democratization during the same year. In 2010, for example, Tunisia could be described as having presidential rule in a semi-authoritarian system. By 2011, however, its political system was qualified democratic and parliamentarian. process.
Considering the yearly change between regimes says little about the transition
Similarly, Egypt had an authoritarian regime in 2010, an interim system in 2011, and
exemplified presidentialism in 2012. Recent years have been extremely unstable in Egypt, with interim governments, constitutional presidencies, and military governments replacing each other on several occasions. Such institutional changes are largely missed by data collected at the yearly level. By providing documentation on monthly changes, MaxRange supports detailed descriptions of the transition process. Like V-Dem, the MaxRange dataset includes all of the component measures used to create them, thereby allowing researchers to focus on individual institutions and to operationalize different categorizations of regime type. Unlike V-Dem, however, the MaxRange dataset has a wider scope and includes institutions, regime types, and political systems that may not be not pertinent to democracy. In identifying political institutions and regime attributes, the author made no prior assumptions about what
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systems actually exist or existed, nor was the focus beholden to existing classifications of regime type. The new dataset thus supports the empirical study of political transitions in the long term by providing information on both democratic and non-democratic institutions that can be used to trace the evolution of different regimes. At the same time, however, MaxRange data can be used to complement and cross-validate V-Dem and other existing datasets. The data collection efforts are fully transparent; all sources used to code them have been documented and archived, allowing scholars to compare source material and to evaluate inter-coder reliability across datasets for specific country-year observations. In the following sections, we discuss the conceptual motivations behind the creation of the MaxRange dataset, explain how the data were collected, and describe the variables. Among other substantial potential contributions, the availability of monthly time-series data offered by the MaxRange dataset provides greater detail and reliability to support more accurate research on political transitions. In the following sections we outline the conceptual motivation and collection efforts, describe the variables, and compare MaxRange data to other sources.
Conceptual motivation and collection scheme
The MaxRange dataset is meant to represent diversity in political regimes and institutions over a long period of time. One of the primary goals was to identify political institutions and institutional practices that distinguish those regimes that could be considered democratic from those that are not; a second goal was to provide information to distinguish between forms of democracy, in the style of Cheibub et al. (2010) and V-Dem, as well as between various forms of nondemocracy--as have Cheibub et al. (Cheibub et al. 2010), Geddes (2003), Geddes et al. (2014), and Hadenius and Teorell (2007). Identifying potential indicators for inclusion involved studying country histories and inductively coding the “forms” historical political regimes took. This involved first relying on traditional concepts and
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gradually expanding the taxonomy. The evolution of regime taxonomy in the process of describing regimes was concerned with fleshing out the relation among concepts, including “gray areas” previously referred to as “illiberal democracies,” “hybrid regimes,” and “electoral authoritarianism” (Levitsky and Way 2002; Haber 2006). The attempt to iteratively refine existing concepts aimed to make “friendly amendments” in order to adequately capture institutional variations that might be observed over time (Adcock and Collier 2001). The evolved taxonomy was thus the result of an interactive process in which the operationalization and scoring of concepts was evaluated, additional institutions were considered, and the expanded concepts were subsequently added and evaluated. Exploring institutional permutations led first to a 100-degree scale (MaxRange1). As some concepts necessitated even finer distinctions, this scale was then expanded into a 1000-degree scale (MaxRange2). MaxRange1 can be thought of as highlighting “first-order” institutional variation in regimes, while MaxRange2 attempted to account for the many different types of “interim” political systems that resulted from institutional innovation. Collecting data on institutions and institutional practices relied on the use of historical sources, such as the constitutions and laws in a country, as well as news reports and encyclopedias such as The Statesman's Yearbook, Keesing’s Record of World Events, and BBC Timelines. All of the reference material that was used for coding has been copied and is archived at Halmstad University in Sweden. The sources that were referenced were used to qualitatively evaluate institutional changes across the full period of observation. Beginning in January 1789, specific institutional practices were noted, and changes in each were coded in the effective month and year of change. Combining indicators as they changed provided the basis for determining regime type. Given that “parchment institutions” do not always reflect empirical reality, the coding of institutional practices favored de jure authority. The first order on which regimes were differentiated involved distinguishing democracy from nondemocracy. To do so, election results from all general national elections were taken into account
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using election results and news or historical sources covering the election. Mandates and reports from international observers and other contemporary reports were used to gauge how pluralized, free, and fair an election had been. Subsequently, a distinction was made between “qualified” and “electoral” democracies based on how well the parliament and the elected leaders were considered representative of the “will of the people,” and how well political and civil rights were maintained. In both qualified and electoral democracies, elections are considered free and legitimate to the people; in systems classified as electoral democracies, however, political or civil rights are sometimes violated, the government exceeds its constitutional powers, or government malpractices obstruct democratic rule.
Variable Description
As described in the Appendix 1, the MaxRange1 index has 100 values on on 1-100 value scale, while MaxRange2 index has 199 values on a 1-1000 scale.3 Each value is given a descriptive lable and corresponds with one of fourteen regime types that we identified, which range from Absolutism to Qualified Democracy. This represents a composite “institutional configuration” score for all nations, which accounts for the legitimacy and degree of pluralism in political elections, the democratic legitimacy of the executive, political division of power between major institutional actors, the observance of political and citizen rights (freedom of expression and equal rights in nomination to elections), and the degree of constitutionalism. The score is ordinal, in the sense that the accumulation of particular attributes can be considered typical ordinal scale values (e.g., differentiating limited, electoral, and qualified democracy), but the subcategories that they connote are nominal insofar as they build upon sets of nominal values of political institutions. The variables in the monthly MaxRange2 1789-2014 dataset covers approximately 240 nations over 2,700 months, constituting more than 700,000 unique values. These data provide information about
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political development in the world as a whole, and for each single nation on a monthly basis for more than two centuries. Figure 1 depicts the sequences of these regime-types ranging from Absolutism (darkest) to Electoral and Qualified Democracy (lightest) in the world between 1789 and 2014, sorted from the ends state 2014 (using TraMineR in R). As the figure shows, the MaxRange data allows scholars to trace modern-day nations back to 1789, or to the month they emerged as nation-states. This is an important asset of MaxRange data, since institutional paths or path dependencies can be investigated as institutions emerge, diffuse, and vanish from 1789 until today. In this way, the MaxRange datasets provide a comprehensive basis for analyzing statebuilding and political institutional development.
Figure 1 about here
The values associated with MaxRange1 (1-100) and MaxRange2 (1-1000) indices imply a specific combination of dummy-variables.
As such, they map onto a large number of dummy variables
regarding specific institutions and institutional practices, which are listed in the Appendix. The index can therefore also be subdivided into regime-type groups, as well as dummy (0 and 1 value) variables, denoting the presence or absence of specific institutions in a national political system. The ability to disaggregate the MaxRange scale into combinations of institutional dummy variables makes it possible to operationalize different classifications of regime type or institutional configurations, as well as to analyze the temporal dynamics of specific political institutions. Other datasets, such as the Institutional and Elections Project and the Database of Political Institutions offer this feature, although the temporal window associated with MaxRange is considerably larger.
Institutional Components
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In combination with other institutional components (fully described in the Appendix 1), the MaxRange index values are coded on the basis of the six major institutional components. These are in order of importance: the MaxRange Regime Types (the most important as it indicates the type of regime to which the other components add information for the specification of the resulting MaxRange2 index value), Executive strength (vs. Parliament), the Accountability Structure of Institutions, Normal vs. Interim Regime, Election of Head of State, and Head of State (Republic or Monarchy). As is indicated in the Appendix 1, there are also other institutional components in the MaxRange2 dataset that are given but not essential in the resulting index value classifications. These are: Executive Concentration (to one or two offices), Head of Government (primary executive power) and Centralization vs. Decentralization (of Government vs. Parliament). In addition, we have produced a syntax file for transforming MaxRange2 index values 1-1000 into a large set of institutional dummies, which are listed in Appendix 2. These dummies are not used in the index classification, but as they provide unique institutional dummy combinations for each value on the 1-1000 scale they are useful for detailed study of separate institutions. As users may have other conceptualizations of regime types than the MaxRange2 Regime Type variable, we will describe that variable last below as a suggested classification, before we compare with other datasets on regime types as a reliability test. The other institutional components described should be less controversial and useful as separate additions to other datasets.
Executive Strength. The institutional component Executive strength indicates the political distribution of power between the legislative and executive powers, and exclusive versus conditional executive powers. The higher value, the more decentralized is power. The coding is based on information about the actual division of powers and accounts in mass media of actual conditions rather than constitutional texts. Resulting variable values are:
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Absolute power,
Overwhelming executive powers,
Dominating executive powers,
Shared executive powers,
Constitutional division of power,
Weak executive power vs. strong legislature.
Accountability Structures of Institutions
The MaxRange2 index values are coded on the basis of the accountability structure and institutional components of each political system. In particular, the MaxRange2 index scale measures how persons are elected or appointed to specific institutional positions and the degree to which they are accountable to each other or the “people”. The typical forms of accountability structures are:
Citizens,
The Parliament,
The Council of Ministers,
The President,
The Regent.
The structure of accountability, together with specific institutional components, comprise fourteen distinct ‘types’, for which we offer brief description:
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Parliamentarism. The accountability structure of a regime is defined as parliamentarian if the executive is derived from or dependent on the parliament. As this is an accountability structure of institutions, rather than a regime type in MaxRange data, parliamentarism may occur in democracies as well as non-democracies. This structure is therefor found in several regime types classified in other datasets. For example, Cheibub et. al (2010) distinguish between Parliamentary democracy, Mixed (semi-presidential) democracy, Presidential Democracy, Civilian Dictatorship, Military Dictatorship and Royal Dictatorship for the period 1946-2008. MaxRange accountability structure Parliamentarism is found primarily in Cheibub et al. regimes Parliamentary Democracy and Civilian Dictatorships.
Presidential parliamentarism. This accountability structure defines a country’s ‘de facto’ character as a parliamentarian state, but adds the distinction that the president is elected directly by the people. Being directly elected, his or her powers are however weak or ceremonial. This structure is found in MaxRange Regime Types Qualified Democracy and Semi-Authoritarianism. This accountability structure mostly occur in Cheibub et al. Mixed (semi-presidential) democracy.
Divided executive. The president in a divided executive structure holds individual powers similar to a semi-presidential president (see below), with the exception of being in charge of and running cabinet/domestic affairs. This institutional structure embodies the French “Fifth Republic” during periods of co-habitation as a typical example. Most other divided executive are not affected under co-habitation. Divided executive as accountability structure is found in MaxRange Regime Types Qualified Democracy, Electoral Democracy, False Democracy and Semi-Authoritarianism. We notice that country-year cases of this accountability structure are found in all Cheibub et al. regime types except Royal dictatorships, but mostly they are found in Mixed (semi-presidential) democracy and Parliamentary democracy.
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Semi-presidentialism. In Semi-Presidential institutional accountability structures, the president controls significant powers, though requiring the consent and countersignature of the prime minister. In response, the signature of the president is needed for cabinet decisions as well. As an accountability structure, it is defined as having a president with significant strength who shares control of running the executive and cabinet affairs. In MaxRange data, this structure is found in the Max Range Regime Types Qualified democracy, Electoral Democracy, False Democracy, Semi-Authoritarianism, De Facto Authoritarianism, Hierarchical Authoritarianism. In other datasets, such as Cheibub et al. (2010), these country cases are most likely to be defined as regime types with partly mixed (semi-presidential) democracy or civilian dictatorship.
Parliamentarian presidentialism. This is a de facto presidentially dominated government accountability structure, but it is combined with a government based on parliamentary approval and/or support. The president is more dominant vis-á-vis government and has stronger personal authority relative to the parliament. This system includes some legislative authorities to rule by decree, and a significant veto on legislation. In the executive role the president is clearly in charge of running the executive or approving cabinet decisions. In the reliability test below, aspects of this accountability structure is assessed in relation to regime types defined in MaxRange and by Cheibub et al. (2010). In MaxRange1 and 2, Parliamentarian presidentialism is found in Qualified Democracy, False Democracy, Semi-Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, and Hierarchical Authoritarianism. Parliamentarian presidentialism is likewise found in all Cheibub et al. regime types, in particular in Civilian and Military Dictatorships.
“Accountable” presidentialism. Apart from the president, individual ministers, including the prime minister, are accountable to and can be dismissed by the parliament in this accountability structure. This is
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a rare accountability structure in MaxRange data, always found in the Regime Type Qualified Democracy, and most of the 27 country-year cases 1946-2008 also occur in Cheibub et al.’s regime type Mixed (semi-presidential) democracy.
Council Parliamentarian. In this accountability structure, chairmanship in government rotates and/or is based on a varieties of parliaments representing different groups (such as in Bosia and Herzegovina). This is also a rare structure, always a Qualified democracy in the MaxRange Regime Type variable. The country-year cases 1946-2008 occur in both Cheibub et al. (2010) regime types Presidential democracy and Civilian dictatorship.
Presidentialism. This is a structure in which the executive of a country is vested in a (usually) directly elected president who is not dependent on parliamentary approval. The strength of the president varies but is not relevant for determining the institutional structure. Instead, the executive strength can be measured separately. Presidentialism is found in most MaxRange Regime Types, such as Qualified Democracy, Interim regime, Electoral Democracy, False Democracy, False Authoritarianism, Semi-Authoritarianism, De facto Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, Despotism and Absolutism. Likewise, it is found in all Cheibub et al. regime types except Royal dictatorship, but to the largest extent in Presidential democracy and Civilian dictatorships.
Monarchical parliamentarism. The Executive is shared between a monarch with limited executive power and a government based on parliamentary approval in this accountability structure. Usually, the monarch does not take active part in cabinet affairs but is in charge of appointing the prime minister. Where the monarch plays a more active role, this is marked by a distinctive accountability structure. Monarchical parliamentarism can be found in Qualified, Electoral and False democracies in the MaxRange Regime
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Type variable.
Constitutional Executive. This is a rare accountability structure, found in the Regime Type Qualified Democracy, in which the constitution stipulates which parties will participate in the government (of which Switzerland is one example). Most of the Constitutional Executive cases are found in Cheibub et al. Presidential democracies, though a few are coded as Civilian and Military dictatorships.
Monarchial. In this structure, the government is vested directly or indirectly in the monarch. However, usually the constitutional powers are limited. When the monarch possesses stronger authority this is defined as a separate regime type. Monarchical regime is found in Regime Types False Democracy, Semi-Authoritarianism, Hierarchical Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, Despotism, and Absolutism. For obvious reasons, this structure is mostly found in what Cheibub et al. define as Royal dictatorships. A few are instead coded as Civilian dictatorships.
Colonial structure. A colony is a structure of accountability in which the territory is controlled by an executive appointed by a foreign nation. Colonial structure may in MaxRange Regime Types be included in False Democracy, Colony and Despotism. In Cheibub et al. data, the colonial structures occur primarily in those regime types referred to as Civilian Dictatorships.
Military. This is a structure in which the executive is vested in the military, officially or unofficially. The military controls government as a junta, or by controlling the prime minister or president. Where a monarch exists, militarism is in place if he has a limited role. Militarism resembles an interim structure when the military has delegated executive powers to a civilian government. Whether the institutional structure is interim or military, then, is dependent on whether the government represents a broad political
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base and/or constitutional restoration has begun. In general, periods of martial law are counted as military accountability structures. Military accountability structure may occur in the Regime Types Military Regime, Interim Regime, Despotism and Absolutism. These regimes are normally referred to by Cheibub et al. as Military Dictatorship, but may also occur in other regime types, notably Civilian dictatorships.
Interim. Interim institutional periods represent regime-types that do not fit into the above mentioned categories. The “type” of interim period varies with regard to whether a parliament/assembly exists, how broad the political base for the government is, and the stage in the transition phase the government is at. This frequently occurs immediately after regime change, under new/restored constitution, or the calling of fresh elections, and is akin to negative Polity scores that represent interrupted, interregna, and transitional observations (-66, -77, -88). Interim structures are therefore always classified as Interim Regime. In Cheibub et al. data, we find interim structure in all three types of regimes, but mostly in Civilian and Military regime types.
Figure 2 describes these accountability structures as they evolve over time.
Figure 2 around here
Normal vs. Interim A special normal vs. interim institutional component is added in the MaxRange dataset and describes in more detail some interim forms, which are of particular interest when studying transition period in which monthly data exhibit various sequences. These sequences are not yet analyzed and therefore not included in this presentation.4
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Election of Head of State Election. The Max Range2 index values reflect legislative as opposed to executive powers with exclusive versus conditional powers. Exclusive and conditional executive powers as values on this variable are mainly related to those between the President or Regent and the Head of the Council of Ministers in order to define the various institutional conditions of semi-presidential systems. Conditional executive powers versus parliament are also considered, when relevant, more often so in authoritarian systems, when coding this variable. Values of this variable are simply indirectly, directly and undefined.
Head of State (Republic or Monarchy)
As institutional component in defining Regime Types and MaxRange index values, we also have the Head of State component, which can have values Republic, Monarchy or Undefined. Figure 3 depicts some of the possible values of the institutional components that are used to define MaxRange2 index values. Each of the 199 values in the MaxRange2 index represents a unique combination of institutional component values. The institutional components that correspond to each index value are given in the Appendix. These institutional component values make it possible to analyze the historical dynamics of separate political institutions, something which is critical for understanding nation building processes, transitions, democratizations, revolutions, reversals, path dependences, and historical dynamics of political institutions in general.
Figure 3 around here
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Regime Types
In combination with other institutional components described above, the MaxRange index values are coded within the context of regime types, so that components add information for the specification of the resulting MaxRange2 index value.
MaxRange index values and Regime Type classifications are based on a number of criteria. These criteria are not added to each other, but are weighted or sorted in order of importance. For meeting democracy classification there are seven main criteria. 1. Territorial control: In order to have a functioning democratic government it must exercise control of a significant part of the country (about 2/3 of the territory). If not the country is under a semi-anarchical or dysfunctional governance. 2. Political competition: The most important factor behind a functioning democracy according to the MaxRange index and Regime Type is that there exist at least two serious and competing political alternatives in the national elections. These alternatives shall have a reasonably equal chance to gain power and are treated equally by state agencies and generally fairly in media coverage. Without a sufficient political competition a country can never achieve democratic standards. 3. Freedom of speech, media, assembly etc.: In order to allow and provide opportunities for fair political competition there must be an acceptable quality of these freedoms. Media freedom is also essential in the fair coverage of the political alternatives. Freedom of speech is essential when political alternatives campaigns for the electorate. 4. Electoral integrity and quality: By this candidates are protected from intimidation, repression or major obstructions in their campaigning and political work. In addition, voting secrecy is
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utmost important and systematic electoral fraud must not exist. Here we make a difference between systematic actions by the state and logistic problems due to lack in communications, society or infrastructure. 5. Constitutional consensus: This implies the mutual respect of the political alternatives roles and positions after the elections. The minority must respect the majority (the government’s) right to rule in its own right as long as it follows the constitutional rules. In return the government must guarantee the minority (the opposition’s) right to function as an active opposition both internally and externally of the parliament. The opposition may of course use all its constitutional mandates to obstruct/criticize the government 6. General suffrage: There needs be equal votes to both genders from at least 21 years of age. A country may however be democratic if all other criteria are well functioning. However qualified democracy requires general suffrage. 7. Constitutional order: the government must not violate constitutional order such as the separation of executive, legislative and judiciary authorities. Further the government cannot make decisions that requires constitutional amendment or parliamentary approval.
Other possible criteria such as social equality, level of violence, logistical/infrastructural issues or political and legislative content(reforms) are not in our understanding crucial for democracy as long as the above criteria and forms are met. Besides criteria for democracy, 2-5 are measured and graded in order to define levels of autocracy. Contrary to datasets such as Freedom House and Polity, MaxRange does not use additive index criteria in order to calculate the level of democracy or non-democracy. According to MaxRange a democracy can vary between qualified or electoral depending on how well political and civil rights are met otherwise. If the democratic standards are met in a country it can never be considered an autocracy (something which is the case in for example Afghanistan or Iraq in 2006-2013 in Freedom
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House and Polity IV). The other side of the coin implies that a country can never compensate for not meeting criteria on basic democracy by, for example, by enhancing levels of social equality or “stability”. On the basis of the fulfilment of these criteria, and the institutional components described above, MaxRange data provide the following Regime Type classification:
Qualified democracy, defined as a comparatively well-functioning democracy, where the political leadership is both legitimate and elected in free and fair elections without serious complaints. Political and civil rights are well functioning, as are constitutional and legal rights as well. Public administration and public authorities are politically independent. Qualified democracy requires that all the seven criteria listed above are acceptable or of good standards.
Electoral democracy, defined as a less well-functioning democracy. Even if the political leadership is regarded as legitimate and elections considered reflecting the "will of the people," electoral democracy is often dominated by the leading party whose dominance in media etc. is strong. Political and/or civil rights are not fully protected. Constitutional rights may be violated with stronger concentration of powers in the government. Public administration and authorities are somehow linked to dominant party. The requirements of an Electoral democracy are that standards 1-4 in the list of democracy criteria above are met even where other political or civil rights are not fully satisfied.
False democracy, defined as a non-functioning democracy, however a regime type with a pluralistic political system. Elections are generally strongly controlled by dominant party, which also often manipulates election results. However, there is a significant political opposition. False democracy does not meet 2 and 4, but must fulfill the first. Criteria 3, 5, 6 and 7 are often met to a reasonable level, but differ among country cases.
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False authoritarianism, defined as de facto one-party rule established as a result of opposition boycott of the elections despite participation in parliament. In contrast to de facto authoritarian status, the boycott is not considered to be legitimate, since the government either shows democratic ambitions or reflects a legitimate mandate of the people. False Authoritarianism generally meet criteria 1, 3, 4, 6 and 7, but does not meet criteria 2 and 5.
Semi-authoritarianism, defined as a repressive and strongly one-party- dominated system. Opposition is legally allowed but severely repressed by the government party. Free elections are far from implemented as a result of fraud, manipulation, repression etc. Semi-Authoritarianism meets criterion 1 and usually 6, can meet criteria 7, but the criteria 2 to 5 have too low standards to reach democracy, however these are not totally non-existing.
De facto Authoritarianism is a similar regime type to the Semi-Authoritarian, with the difference that opposition parties are not represented at all in parliament as a result of legitimate boycott or the failure to gain any mandate. This regime-type is also coded in cases where political parties are non-existing and Members of Parliament are independent. De Facto Authoritarianism meets criteria 1 and usually 6. I can meet criterion 7. Criteria 2 to 5 have too low standards. Especially criteria 2 is also critically lower than in the Semi-Authoritarian case
Authoritarianism (one-party system), is defined as an aristocratic rule or a one-party system where opposition parties are not legal or allowed to participate. Here, the parliament and/or ruling party holds significant powers, which contrasts with more personalist systems where an individual is more dominant. Authoritarianism meets criterion 1, but totally fails 2-5. Criteria 6 and 7 cannot be met.
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Hierarchical authoritarianism is semi-authoritarianism combined with a dominating or overwhelming executive, either presidential or monarchical. Hierarchial Authoritarianism meets criteria 1 but fails 2-5, even though meeting a low standard. The criterion 7 is strongly failed. Criterion 6 is often met.
Despotism is defined is Authoritarianism combined with a dominating or overwhelming executive, either presidential or monarchical. Despotism meets criterion 1, but fails all other except for 6 which can be met. Compared to Hierarchial Authoritarianism, criteria 2-4 are not met at all.
Absolutism, where full absolute executive and legislative power is in the hand of the executive, either military, presidential, monarchical, or under prime minister. This power can be inherited, have been acquired from a dissolved suspended parliament, a military coup, or be prime ministerial. The parliament can exist in some cases, but is then elected by or subordinated to the executive. No political institutions or opposition exist.
Interim regimes indicates a transitional regime between various forms of other types of regimes, typically without an elected executive or elected parliament.
Semi-Anarchical Regime indicates a non-democratic state of governmental without a single functional central government, or two or more rival regimes controlling different parts of the territory.
Figure 4 around here
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Reliability
The variables in the MaxRange2 dataset can also be merged with existing datasets, such as the V-Dem, Polity, and Polyarchy, based on the country-code variable. Figure 5 shows a plot of the number of institutionalized democracies that scored at least a 6 or 7 on the Polity index scale, 2 or more on the Freedom House Civil Liberties scale, the democracy value count on the Geddes, Wright and Franz Non-Autocracy variable, and the democracy count on the Cheibub, Antonio, Gandhi and Vreeland variable (2010) and comparing it with the number of countries coded by MaxRange2 as electoral democracies (790 or greater) or qualified democracies (870 or greater). The information in the MaxRange2 dataset provides observations that start earlier than Polity IV, includes more country cases (Polity IV covers nation with populations larger than 500,000), but which also comports with the time-series plots shown by aggregating Polity IV values. The correlations between MaxRange value of 790 or more with Polity IV values of 6 or more and 7 or more are 0.794 and 0.762, respectively.
Figure 5 around here.
Table 1 around here.
The cross-tabulation in table 1 shows that there exist discrepancies between the MaxRange2 regime types and the Cheibub et al. (2010) regime categories. For example, in the Cheibub et al. dataset, 424 country-year cases are classified as different types of dictatorships, while in MaxRange2 they are defined as democracies, either Qualified or Electoral. Since Cheibub et al. have data from 1946 to 2008
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(62 years), this translates into 6 to 7 country cases per year that differ between the two datasets. These discrepancies are most likely the effect of the “alternation rule” applied by Cheibub et al., which requires an “alternation in power under electoral rules identical to the ones that brought the incumbent to office must have taken place,” in order for a political system to be classified as democracy. There are also other reasons for discrepancies, we believe. Looking at examples from the last year of the Cheibub et al. dataset, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Guyana, Montenegro, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia are all are classified as Civilian dictatorships by Cheibub et al., while in MaxRange2 they are coded as democracies; in the case of Mozambique as Electoral democracy and in the rest Qualified democracy. We think that Cheibub et al. have made correct applications of their strict criteria of democracy, and also sympathize with their alternation rule, but MaxRange2 uses other criteria which may in some cases produce different resulting classifications. Likewise, 158 Parliamentary democracies, 143 Mixed (semi-presidential) democracies and 158 Presidential democracies according to Cheibub et al. classifications (altogether 459 or 7,4 per cent each year 1946-2008), are not defined as democracies in MaxRange2. Typical examples are: Ghana 1980, a country that by the end of that year had a coup d’état that overthrown the previous democratic government. In MaxRange2, the value in the yearly data is defined by state of the regime by the end of December, when the regime cannot reasonably be considered democratic. The authoritarian system in Panama ended with a coup d’état in December 1989 and since democracy was not implemented that year, MaxRange2 yearly data differs from the Cheibub et al. dataset. Honduras was not a democracy in 1984 according to MaxRange. Democracy was instead implemented in 1986. Comoros in 1990 and 1991 was not democratic, since elections were not implemented and a multi-party system did not exist. Bangladesh in 1986-90 is considered democracy by Cheibub et al. while in MaxRange2 it is classified it as Hierarchical Authoritarian, since president Ershad is considered too dominant a leader and the elections that were implemented were hardly democratic. Likewise, in the Republic of Congo 1961-62, the
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president, according to MaxRange, was not elected in a fair election. Dominican Republic 1966-1977 exhibits a similar pattern; elections held are not considered democratic enough. Venezuela 2007 is another example which we consider not democratic since the elections 2005 were boycotted by the opposition so it was not represented in the parliament. Chavez ruled by decree. Both factors are not acceptable in a democracy according to the listed principles above. As a last example, Cap Verde in the 1990 elections cannot be considered democratic and a multi-party system was not yet implemented. Our conclusion is that the Cheibub et al. (2010) criteria for democracy differ from the ones that are used in MaxRange, and that outcomes in terms of democracy vs. non-democracy also differs as a natural consequence.
Conclusion
MaxRange data addresses some of the issues that have limited the analyses of the historical dynamics of political institutions and democratization among nations on a world scale. One is length of time series data and the time steps. MaxRange offers yearly data from 1600 and monthly from 1789. Data sets beginning in the early 1800s, such as Polity and Polyarchy, do not offer the institutional detail needed for modeling how formal political institutions have evolved. This has also been an issue in path dependency studies, since they rely on longer time perspectives. MaxRange also, compared to Polity, offers data on countries with less than 500,000 inhabitants. In addition, MaxRange is able to be merged with other datasets using UN and Correlates of War country codes.
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References:
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Geddes, Barbara. 2003. Paradigms and sand castles : theory building and research design in comparative politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Geddes, Barbara, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz. 2014. "Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions: A New Data Set." Perspectives on Politics 12 (2):313-31. Gleditsch, Kristian S, and Michael D Ward. 1997. "Double take a reexamination of democracy and autocracy in modern polities." Journal of Conflict Resolution 41 (3):361-83. Grzymala-Busse, Anna. 2010. "Time Will Tell? Temporality and the Analysis of Causal Mechanisms and Processes." Comparative Political Studies. Gurr, Ted Robert. 1974. "Persistence and Change in Political Systems, 1800-1971." The American Political Science Review 68 (4):1482-504. Haber, Stephen. 2006. "Authoritarian Government." In The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, ed. B. Weingast and D. Wittman. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hadenius, Axel, and Jan Teorell. 2007. "Pathways from Authoritarianism." Journal of Democracy 18 (1):143-57. Hall, Peter A., and Rosemary C. R. Taylor. 1996. "Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms*." Political Studies 44 (5):936-57. Jaggers, Keith, and Ted Robert Gurr. 1995. "Tracking Democracy's Third Wave with the Polity III Data." Journal of Peace Research 32 (4):469-82. Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan Way. 2002. "The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism." Journal of Democracy 13 (2):51-65. Lipset, Seymor M, and Stein Rokkan. 1967. Party systems and voter alignments: cross-national perspectives. New York: Free Press. Marshall, Monty G., and Keith Jaggers. 2002. "Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2002: Dataset Users' Manual." Polity IV Project, University of Maryland, College Park, MD. ———. 2010. "Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions 1800–2008." University of Maryland. Munck, Gerardo L., and Jay Verkuilen. 2002. "Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: Evaluating Alternative Indices." Comparative Political Studies 35 (1):5-34. 27
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Figure 1. Sequences of Political Regimes in the World 1789-2014, Sorted from End State
Note: Sequences of political regimes from Absolutism (black) to Qualified Democracy (white) using TraMineR sequence analysis package in R. Source: Rånge and Sandberg (2014)
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Figure 2. Accountability structures and institutional components, 1600-2014
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Figure 3. Examples of Institutional Components in MaxRange2, 1600-2014
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Figure 4. Regime Types in MaxRange2, 1600-2014
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Figure 5. Comparing the number of democracies in the world: MaxRange values Electoral and Qualified Democracy 1780-2014 vs. Polity IV Democracy
Note: Years 1600-1700 have 0 on MaxRange2 760 or more and are therefore omitted.
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Table 1. A cross tabulation of the MaxRange Regime Types and Cheibub et al. regime types.
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Endnotes: 1
The seven principles are Electoral, Liberal, Participatory, Majoritarian, Consensual, Deliberative, and
Egalitarian (Coppedge et al. 2015). 3
Value 5 is omitted on the scale, since it cannot exist as type of Absolutism.
4
Values of this variable include also interim regime conditions such as Government Acting,
Extra-Parliamentary Government, Parliament Obsolete Election, Parliamentarism Illegitimate Election, Interim Post- Election Parliamentarian, Interim Elected Assembly, Interim Opposition Grand Coalition, Interim Parliamentarian Pluralism, Interim Parliamentarian Dominating Party, Interim Acting President Interim Coalition New Regime – Old Regime, Interim Pre- Election Coalition, Constitutional, Interim Coalition, Interim New Regime Constitutional or Pre-Election, Interim New Regime, Interim Old Regime Constitutional, Interim Old Regime Pre- Election, Interim Old Regime Reform, Interim Democracy Open to Reform Approved by Opposition, Interim Democracy Open to Reform Unilaterally, Military RegimeCivilian Coalition, Military Regime-Civilian Dominated & Constitutional, Interim Military Regime, Civilian Group or Party Dominated, Disputed Governance, Semi-Anarchical, Martial Law Institutions Martial Law Suspended Institutions, Suspended Parliament, Occupational Military Regime Rule and Military Regime Junta (see Appendix 1). As mentioned in text, the interim regimes and sequences are not described or analyzed here.
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