https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Since Beck, Katz, and Tucker (1998), the standard method for modeling time dependence in binary data has been to incorporate time dummies or splined time in logistic regressions. Although we agree with the need for modeling time dependence, we demonstrate that time dummies can induce estimation problems due to separation. Splines do not suffer from these problems. However, the complexity of splines has led substantive researchers (1) to use knot values that may be inappropriate for their data and (2) to ignore any substantive discussion concerning temporal dependence. We propose a relatively simple alternative: including t, t 2 , and t 3 in the regression. This cubic polynomial approximation is trivial to implement—and, therefore, interpret—and it avoids problems such as quasi-complete separation. Monte Carlo analysis demonstrates that, for the types of hazards one often sees in substantive research, the polynomial approximation always outperforms time dummies and generally performs as well as splines or even more flexible autosmoothing procedures. Due to its simplicity, this method also accommodates nonproportional hazards in a straightforward way. We reanalyze Crowley and Skocpol (2001) using nonproportional hazards and find new empirical support for the historical-institutionalist perspective.

/pdf/back-to-the-future-modeling-time-dependence-in-binary-data-51zbd54rc2.pdf

Back to the Future: Modeling Time Dependence in Binary Data

Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. Pippa Norris. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 303 pp. $60 hbk., $20 pbk. Forecasts that the Internet heralds a world of more democracy and less poverty seem as inflated as dot.com stocks. This rosy view has electronic voting, political chat rooms, and email access re-engaging apathetic publics in politics. Digital technologies redress economic disparities, and the benefits of the Internet percolate down to transform poor societies. Equally exaggerated is the gloom of naysayers. The Internet Age has done little to narrow the gap between rich and poor countries, the information haves and havenots, cyber-skeptics contend. Indeed, digital technologies could create new inequalities and reinforce the dominance of power elites. In her new book, Digital Divide, Pippa Norris, associate director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, steps into this fusillade of cyber-hyperbole, lowers the decibel with a well-written and thoughtful examination of Internet use and access in 179 countries and dissects the claims and counter-claims. Her research and findings place her on middle ground, somewhere between current reality and optimism. The Internet era seems to be changing "politics as usual" in a number of countries, expanding and loosening information about governments and politics, allowing the entrance of new political players, and fostering international movements on the environment, women's rights, and other issues across borders. The disappointment is that digital technologies are activating the already politically active and passing up the disengaged and uninterested. A major challenge to digital democracy is the gulf between the United States, Scandinavia, and other early Internet adopters and the rest of the world. That gap is now so wide that at the turn of the century, more than three-quarters of the online community lived in the developed world. Internet use tracks the path of economic and technological development. But that situation could begin to change, Norris says. The Internet is in its technological adolescence. Costs of access are falling. And governments can make a difference if policymakers take the initiative. We have the historical patterns of other communication technologies to study. Norris examines theories of technological diffusion and points out that the American response to the Internet is more akin to the rapid spread of televisions and VCRs than the slower adoption of telephones and radios. American dominance could recede as Internet access grows worldwide. Contrary to what officials of the Bush Administration contend, Norris finds that the digital divide between rich and poor within the United States remains substantial. Europe mirrors that trend. In the long run, the Internet could become more accessible to the excluded: lower income families, minorities, and women. …

Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide

Applications of modern methods for analyzing data with missing values, based primarily on multiple imputation, have in the last half-decade become common in American politics and political behavior. Scholars in this subset of political science have thus increasingly avoided the biases and inefficiencies caused by ad hoc methods like listwise deletion and best guess imputation.However,researchersinmuchofcomparativepoliticsandinternationalrelations,andotherswithsimilardata, have been unable to do the same because the best available imputation methods work poorly with the time-series crosssectiondatastructurescommoninthesefields.Weattempttorectifythissituationwiththreerelateddevelopments.First,we build a multiple imputation model that allows smooth time trends, shifts across cross-sectional units, and correlations over time and space, resulting in far more accurate imputations. Second, we enable analysts to incorporate knowledge from area studies experts via priors on individual missing cell values, rather than on difficult-to-interpret model parameters. Third, because these tasks could not be accomplished within existing imputation algorithms, in that they cannot handle as many variables as needed even in the simpler cross-sectional data for which they were designed, we also develop a new algorithm that substantially expands the range of computationally feasible data types and sizes for which multiple imputation can be used. These developments also make it possible to implement the methods introduced here in freely available open source software that is considerably more reliable than existing algorithms.

/pdf/what-to-do-about-missing-values-in-time-series-cross-section-yaou97io1y.pdf

What to Do about Missing Values in Time-Series Cross-Section Data

The concept of electoral competition is relevant to a variety of research agendas in political science, yet the question of how to measure electoral competition has received little direct attention. We revisit the distinction proposed by Giovanni Sartori between competition as a structure or rule of the game and competitiveness as an outcome of that game, and argue that to understand which elections can be lost (and therefore when parties and leaders are potentially threatened by electoral accountability), scholars may be better off considering the full range of elections where competition is allowed. We provide a dataset of all national elections between 1945 and 2006 and a measure of whether each election event is structured such that competition is possible. We outline the pitfalls of other measures used by scholars to de fine the potential for electoral competition, and show that such methods can lead to biased or incomplete findings. The new global data on elections and the minimal conditions necessary for electoral competition are introduced, followed by an empirical illustration of the differences between the proposed measure of competition and existing methods used to infer the existence of competition.

/pdf/which-elections-can-be-lost-3u839dq6mi.pdf

Which Elections Can Be Lost

The concept of electoral competition is relevant to a variety of research agendas in political science, yet the question of how to measure electoral competition has received little direct attention. We revisit the distinction proposed by Giovanni Sartori between competition as a structure or rule of the game and competitiveness as an outcome of that game and argue that to understand which elections can be lost (and therefore when parties and leaders are potentially threatened by electoral accountability), scholars may be better off considering the full range of elections where competition is allowed. We provide a data set of all national elections between 1945 and 2006 and a measure of whether each election event is structured such that the competition is possible. We outline the pitfalls of other measures used by scholars to define the potential for electoral competition and show that such methods can lead to biased or incomplete findings. The new global data on elections and the minimal conditions necessary for electoral competition are introduced, followed by an empirical illustration of the differences between the proposed measure of competition and existing methods used to infer the existence of competition.

/pdf/which-elections-can-be-lost-rzsfnp3g76.pdf

Do economic sanctions destabilize the governments they target? A form of foreign pressure, sanctions are typically meant to alter the policies of other countries. There is much pessimism on whether they ever work. This article shows that economic pressure works in at least one respect: it destabilizes the leaders it targets. I present a theoretical argument that explains why destabilization is a necessary condition for successful coercion. I find evidence that pressure destabilizes in a large panel of cross-country time-series data. The destabilization finding indicates that sanctions may be more effective at altering policies than we think. I conclude by noting that greater optimism regarding the effectiveness of sanctions should be balanced by a careful consideration of the policy's real and sizeable costs for those caught in the middle.

Do Economic Sanctions Destabilize Country Leaders

We use new data on coup d’etats and elections to document a striking development: whereas the vast majority of successful coups before 1991 installed durable rules, the majority of coups after that have been followed by competitive elections. We argue that after the Cold War international pressure influenced the consequences of coups. In the post-Cold War era those countries that are most dependent on Western aid have been the first to embrace competitive elections after the coup. Our theory also sheds light on the pronounced decline in the number of coups since 1991. While the coup d’etat has been and still is the single most important factor leading to the downfall of democratic government, our findings indicate that the new generation of coups has been far less harmful for democracy than their historical predecessors.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2270631_code1105900.pdf?abstractid=2270631&mirid=3

Coups and Democracy

This study uses new data on coups d’etat and elections to document a striking development: whereas the vast majority of successful coups before 1991 installed durable rules, the majority of coups after that have been followed by competitive elections. The article argues that after the Cold War, international pressure influenced the consequences of coups. In the post-Cold War era, countries that were most dependent on Western aid were the first to embrace competitive elections after their coups. This theory also helps explain the pronounced decline in the number of coups since 1991. While the coup d’etat has been (and still is) the single most important factor leading to the downfall of democratic governments, these findings indicate that the new generation of coups has been far less harmful for democracy than their historical predecessors.

http://www.jonathanmpowell.com/uploads/2/9/9/2/2992308/goemans__marinov_bjpsof_-_coups_and_democracy.pdf

Nikolay Marinov

Papers

Which Elections Can Be Lost

Which Elections Can Be Lost

Do Economic Sanctions Destabilize Country Leaders

Coups and Democracy

Coups and Democracy