Abstract
This chapter analyzes the effects of democracy profiles on these different performance outcomes. After the development of the theory which differentiates between three general effect types of democracy profiles, I apply a Bayesian time-series cross-sectional analysis. The results show that the democracy profiles do not have an immediate effect, but these effects need a longer period of time to manifest themselves (usually decades). The results indicate that there is not an overall better performing democracy profile. Libertarian democracies have a (slight) advantage in economic performance, while egalitarian democracies show better results on the environmental outcomes, and especially on the economic equality and social equality outcomes. There are mixed results for goal-attainment performance, and no effects are found for confidence performance.
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Notes
- 1.
There is also a considerable critique of the conceptualization and measurement of consensus and majoritarian democracy (Müller-Rommel, 2008; Schmidt, 2019; Croissant, 2010; Bogaards, 2017a).
- 2.
The Schmidt index (Schmidt, 1992) is a five point scale measuring the ideology of the governmental party: 1 Hegemony of right-wing (and centre) parties; 2 Dominance of right-wing (and centre) parties; 3 Balance of power between left and right; 4 Dominance of social-democratic and other left parties; 5 Hegemony of social-democratic and other left parties.
- 3.
See Chapter 2 for a description of these democracy types.
- 4.
As a hard robustness test, they could have computed the regression for each time point separately.
- 5.
For a detailed discussion, see Schmidt et al. (2007).
- 6.
The within effect \({x}_{gt}^{W}\) is group mean centered \({x}_{gt}^{W}= {x}_{gt}- {\stackrel{-}{x}}_{g}\), the between effect \({x}_{g}^{B}\) is grand-mean centered \({x}_{g}^{B}= {\stackrel{-}{x}}_{g}-\stackrel{-}{x}\).
- 7.
Coefficients for the lagged dependent variable close to its “bounds are often a sign of model misspecification” (Keele et al., 2016, p. 302): For the ADL, the coefficient should lie between 0 and 1, while coefficient > = 1 indicates a unit root or an explosive time series. For the ECM, this coefficient should be in the range −1 to 0. Values ≥ 0 are troublesome. ADL and ECM are explained below.
- 8.
The ADL model is defined as following (Beck & Katz, 2011; De Boef & Keele, 2008; Wilkins, 2018): \({y}_{i,t}={\alpha }_{0}+\mathrm{ }{\alpha }_{1}{y}_{i,t-1}+\mathrm{ }{\beta }_{0}{x}_{i,t}+\mathrm{ }{\beta }_{1}{x}_{i,t-1}+\mathrm{ }\varepsilon\). \({y}_{i,t}\) is the dependent variable, \(\varepsilon\) is an IID error term, \({\alpha }_{1}{y}_{i,t-1}\) represents the LDV, \({\beta }_{0}{x}_{i,t}\) and \({\beta }_{1}{x}_{i,t-1}\) are the (lagged) independent variables and \({\alpha }_{0}\) is the intercept.
- 9.
The formula for the ECM is (Beck & Katz, 2011; De Boef & Keele, 2008; Wilkins, 2018): \(\Delta {y}_{i,t}={\alpha }_{0}+{\alpha }_{1}^{\mathrm{*}}{y}_{i,t-1}+\mathrm{ }{\beta }_{0}\Delta {x}_{i,t}+\mathrm{ }{\beta }_{1}^{\mathrm{*}}{x}_{i,t-1}+\mathrm{ }\varepsilon\), where \(\Delta {y}_{i,t}\) is the first-differenced dependent variable, \(\varepsilon\) is an IID error term, \({\alpha }_{1}^{\mathrm{*}}{y}_{i,t-1}\) is the LDV, \({\beta }_{0}\Delta {x}_{i,t}\) is the first differenced-independent variable, \({\beta }_{1}^{\mathrm{*}}{x}_{i,t-1}\) is the lagged independent variable and \({\alpha }_{0}\) is the intercept.
- 10.
There is an extensive literature dealing with common misinterpretations of p-values, confidence intervals etc. (Gigerenzer, 1993; Goodman, 2008; Greenland et al., 2016).
- 11.
Please note that the Democracy Matrix includes corruption measure only in the contextual measurement stage. However, the trade-off measurement of the democracy profiles is not based on the context measurement but on the core measurement.
- 12.
This is measured by creating a binary variable fiscalcrisis_cat which takes the values 0 for all years before 2008, and 1 for all the years since 2008.
- 13.
For a detailed discussion of this indicator, see section 3.3.4.
- 14.
The formulation and labels of the items are as follows: Satisfaction with financial situation of household (1:Dissatisfied; 10:Satisfied); Interest in politics (1: Very interested; 4: Not at all interested); Highest educational level attained (1: inadequately completed elementary education; 8:University with degree); Scale of incomes (1: Lower step; 11: Highest step); Most people can be trusted (1: Most people can be trusted; 2: Can´t be too careful); Post-Materialist index (1: Materialist; 3: Postmaterialist). The scales for interest in politics and social trust are reversed.
- 15.
Alternative time periods were tested; but it did not change the results.
- 16.
However, the time-span for a significant effect varies with the specification of the simulation. When there is a faster change to the highest value of the independent variable (democracy profile), the effect becomes significant more quickly. Nevertheless, the effects of the democracy profile still needed about 15 years to be realized.
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Schlenkrich, O. (2021). Explaining Goal-Oriented Performance. In: Origin and Performance of Democracy Profiles. Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-34880-9_8
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