Working papers
Pathways to Democracy with J. Doucette
Why do some democratic transitions last? Different pathways to democracy have been theorized to result in lasting transitions, emphasizing, for instance, the importance of developing state capacity prior to democratization. This letter argues that the empirical specifications used in much applied work are not appropriate for testing such pathway explanations. To illustrate this, we examine the pathway version of modernization theory using theoretically guided specifications and subsequently compare them to conventional specifications. Substantively, the analysis reveals i) that higher socioeconomic development put countries on a path towards either stable autocracy or stable democracy and ii) that the path to stable democracy becomes more likely than stable autocracy at higher levels of development. This differs from conventional specifications that find no relationship between development and transitions to democracy and a positive relationship between post-transition development and regime stability. These results underscore the importance of ensuring consistency between empirical specification and theoretical argument.
From Disparity to Grievance: Comparing the Effects of Interethnic and Interpersonal Inequality with L. F. Aarslew L. F. and M. E. Christensen.
Macrolevel research indicates that interethnic inequalities are more likely than interpersonal inequalities to incite collective grievances, conflict, and instability. However, the microlevel processes driving this destabilizing effect remain underexamined. We hypothesize that raising awareness among disadvantaged groups about actual inequality levels intensifies perceptions and feelings of injustice and that ethnic disparities elicit particularly strong reactions. To test this, we conducted survey experiments in the US (N = 3,000), India (N = 1,600), and South Africa (N = 1,600). Our findings indicate that exposure to real-world inequality consistently leads to perceptions of greater injustice in the economic distribution and intensifies feelings of anger and frustration related to it. However, we find only partial support for the idea that intergroup inequality is perceived as more unfair and evokes stronger feelings of injustice than interpersonal inequality.
Does ethno-political exclusion cause civil war onset via grievances? Evidence from comparative case studies with L. Rørbæk and SE. Skaaning
This paper uses qualitative evidence from all the cases between 1991 and 2021, where a politically excluded group is involved in a conflict onset, to investigate whether group grievances concerning political exclusion explain the onset of civil war. The analysis find support for the prominent proposition in many cases, where grievance-based mobilization triggered civil war when governments countered mobilized groups with either indiscriminate repression or an incoherent mix of repressive and accommodative policies. These strategies have typically been adopted by states that did not have the capacity to selectively target dissidents or to repress or accommodate their challengers consistently. Moreover, the relationship was reversed in other cases, where armed conflict tended to be a key motivation for rebellion because it led to disruption of public order and the exclusion of ethnic groups. This means that while there is substantial backing for the exclusion-civil war relationship, reverse causality is also common. These findings call for a revision of unidirectional versions of grievance-based theory and suggest that empirical assessments should do more to tackle endogeneity.
Dynamics of Regime Change: A New Dataset on Actors, Actions, and Ambitions with D. Andersen and SE. Skaaning
We present a new dataset, specifying the dynamics of regime change for all democratic transitions and breakdowns from 1789 to 2022. Existing datasets primarily focus on the basic distinction between democracy and autocracy and their associated institutions. While some do address various types of regime change, they tend to cover only a limited range of dynamics or rely on compound categories that lack a clear specification of the underlying components. Our dataset breaks standards by comprehensively coding the dynamics of regime change, capturing the roles of leading, supporting, and opposing actors, their actions, the nature of mobilization and violence, and the underlying justifications. It includes highly transparent procedures comprising disaggregated indicators, explicit case-specific coding rationales, and certainty estimates. This dataset facilitates nuanced and robust studies of the causes and consequences of regime change.
Democracy on the Horizon: Strategic Welfare Expansions Before Transition with C. Jensen
Democratization is commonly expected to reduce economic inequality, as political inclusion empowers the less affluent. However, empirical studies have struggled to find a robust link between democratization and equality, posing a significant puzzle for social science. This project offers a novel explanation by focusing on redistributive social policies implemented in the decade preceding democratization. Drawing on case studies and descriptive statistics, we identify two pathways driving welfare expansions before democratic transitions: anticipated competition, where autocratic incumbents introduce popular policies to prepare for democratic elections, and failed concessions, where autocratic welfare reforms aim to stabilize regimes but fail to prevent democratization. These findings challenge the assumption that redistributive changes occur primarily after democratization, highlighting strategic policy dynamics during transitional periods. Our study contributes to understanding distributive politics during regime change and enriches the literature on autocratic welfare states, emphasizing the anticipatory and strategic nature of welfare reforms under autocratic rule.
The Democracy-Inequality Paradox: How Democratization Increases Redistribution without Reducing Inequality with C. Jensen
Despite good reasons to believe that democracy reduces economic inequality, the empirical evidence is mixed, and most recent studies have concluded that there is no robust average effect. This paper contributes to the discussion by arguing theoretically and showing empirically that there is a need to differentiate between the level of inequality before redistribution (market inequality), redistribution via taxes and welfare state programs (amount of redistribution), and the level of inequality after redistribution (net inequality). Extant work generally fails to make this distinction, which is detrimental to our understanding of the relationship between democracy and inequality, since democratic experience increases redistribution but also increases market inequality. A global statistical analysis supports this perspective and indicates that, overall, the two effects tend to cancel each other out.
Book Project
Ethnicity, Equality, and Democracy: The Viability of Popular Rule in Plural Societies
The book project examines how socioeconomic ethnic inequality affects the prospects of democratic development. Rather than studying diversity and inequality in isolation, it ties the two together to shed new light on the multifaceted relationship between ethnicity, equality, and democracy. The findings show that ethnic inequality is highly destabilizing for democracy, and that this effect is much stronger than those of economic inequality or ethnic heterogeneity alone.
While the book mainly focuses on democracy as an outcome, I also reverse the causal arrow to consider democracy’s effect on ethnic inequality, showing that democratization can bring about greater socioeconomic equality between groups. Under certain circumstances, democracies enter propitious pathways that reduce ethnic inequality and increase democratic resilience. The book thus explains how ethnic equality and democracy can mutually reinforce each other, demonstrating that it is possible for popular rule to endure and thrive in plural societies.