Data on democratic diffusion
(Stata file) (Codebook)
These are the variables used in Daniel Brinks and Michael Coppedge,
“Diffusion Is No Illusion: Neighbor Emulation in the Third Wave of
Democracy” Comparative Political
Studies 39:4 (May 2006): 463-489.
The Polyarchy and Contestation
Scales
for 1985 and 2000 (Excel spreadsheet with
full documentation) (SPSS file with data only)
These are Guttman scales, and their component variables, measuring
levels of the contestation dimension of polyarchy in every independent
state in the world as of mid-1985 and mid-2000. There is also an
indicator of the extent of the suffrage for 1985. The Polyarchy scale
is the one documented in Michael Coppedge and Wolfgang Reinicke,
"Measuring Polyarchy,"
Studies in Comparative International Development
25:1 (Spring 1990): 51-72; and used in "Modernization and Thresholds of
Democracy," in Manus Midlarsky, ed., Inequality, Democracy, and
Economic
Development, pp. 177-201 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997). This has
now been updated for 2000. The Contestation scale is a slightly less
precise but more reliable version, coded by students at the University
of Notre Dame in 2003-05. See the Excel file for more information.
Contestation and Inclusiveness,
1950-2000 (SPSS file) (codebook)
These are the two principal components of 13-15 indicators of
democracy, including those compiled by Freedom House; Polity; Arthur
Banks; Alvarez, Cheibub, Limongi, and Przeworski, as updated by Cheibub
and Gandhi; Bollen; and Cingranelli and Richards. The dataset covers
most countries in the world from 1950 through 2000. In an article in
the Journal of Politics
(July 2008), Angel Alvarez, Claudia Maldonado, and I argue that these
principal components, which capture 75 percent of variation in the most
commonly used democracy indicators, measure Robert Dahl's two
dimensions of polyarchy: contestation and inclusiveness. We recommend
that scholars use the standardized versions of these components
(CONTESTstd and INCLUSstd), which have been adjusted to be comparable
from year to year. [Updated 6/25/2009 to remove some meaningless observations for nonexistent country-years.]