This state is not subject to one man’s will, but is a free city. The king here is the people, who by yearly office Govern in turn. Euripides,The Suppliant Women.
Abstract
This study presents a classification of political regimes as democracies and dictatorships for a set of 141 countries between 1950 or the year of independence and 1990. It improves existing classifications by a better grounding in political theory, an exclusive reliance on observables rather than on subjective judgements, an explicit distinction between systematic and random errors, and a more extensive coverage.
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Additional information
Mike Alvarez is assistant professor of political science at De Paul University. José Antonio Cheibub is assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. Fernando Limongi is assistant professor of political science at the University of São Paulo. Adam Przeworski is professor of politics at New York University. This paper is part of a larger project on the relationship between political institutions and economic performance.
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Alvarez, M., Cheibub, J.A., Limongi, F. et al. Classifying political regimes. St Comp Int Dev 31, 3–36 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02719326
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02719326