Democratization:
Measures of Regime Change in Comparative Perspective
Paper prepared for workshop 17, “The Numbers We Use, The World We See:
Evaluating Cross-National Datasets in Comparative Politics”, directed by Cas
Mudde and Andreas Schedler, at the 2008 ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops,
Rennes, 12-16 April 2008.
Work in progress. Comments welcome, quotes not yet.
Matthijs Bogaards
Associate-Professor in Political Science
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Jacobs University Bremen
Campus Ring 1
D-28759 Bremen, Germany
Website: http://www.jacobs-university.de/directory/02727
January – July 2008: Research Fellow, UN University for Peace, Costa Rica
2
Abstract
In the literature on “the third wave of democratization”, the concepts of
regime change and democratization are often used in a loose fashion. Recent
interest in the question how to measure democracy has not been matched by
attention to the question of how to define and operationalize democratic
transitions. This paper presents an overview of the main approaches to the
empirical identification of democratic transitions using widely available
databases with regime characteristics and regime classifications. The second
part of the paper then revisits the controversial argument that new,
incomplete democracies are more likely to go to war and examines, briefly,
how different conceptions of democratization affect case selection and
empirical results.
3
Introduction
It is common to talk about a “third wave of democratization” to denote the
global spread of democracy in the past three decades and there is by now a
substantial literature on democratic transitions. However, the question of how
to operationalize the concept of "regime change" has not received much
attention. This is all the more surprising in light of the increasing interest in
measuring democracy (See, for example, Bogaards 2007a/b). This workshop
paper examines how political scientists operationalize "democratization" and
"democratic transition" with the help of such widely used measures of
democracy as Freedom House and Polity, as well as other measures of
democracy and regime classifications.
In a previous paper, I have examined the many different ways in which
scholars draw the line in continuous measures of democracy.1 That analysis
was static in the sense that it was interested in regime classifications at a
particular moment in time. In this workshop paper, in contrast, the analysis is
dynamic, in that it focuses on regime change and looks exclusively at those
studies that are explicitly dealing with the process of democratization.
The paper starts with an overview of the different ways to empirically capture
transitions to democracy. Broadly speaking, there are two ways in which
regime change is operationalised. First, as a change of categories. These can
be derived from scores (Freedom House, Polity, Vanhanen) or come directly
from categorical coding schemes (Gasiorowski, Przeworski et al.). The second
way to assess regime change is through a change of scores. Such a change
can be defined by magnitude and/or direction.
The second part of the paper stages a first, preliminary, test of the possible
effect of different operationalizations and classifications on theory testing in
comparative politics and international relations through a tentative reexamination of Mansfield and Snyder's (2005) research on the relation
between democratization and violent conflict. These authors use Polity
categories to operationalize regime change and claim to have established a
relationship between (incomplete) democratization and war. Is this result
robust to different operationalizations of regime change as can be found in
the literature? This will be the first systematic test, however incomplete, of
the misgivings about case selection in Mansfield and Snyder (2005) voiced by
scholars like Carothers (2007b) and McFaul (2007).
1
Matthijs Bogaards, “From Degree to Type: The Difficult Art of Drawing the Line in
Continuous Measures of Democracy”, paper presented at the annual conference of the Swiss
Political Science Association, Balsthal, November 2006 and, in a revised version, at the ECPR
General Conference, Pisa, September 2007.
4
Conceptualizing and Measuring Democratization
The first publication to systematically track the spread of democracy in recent
decades was Huntington (1991). This popular book has made a lasting
contribution with, and some would say only because (Zimmerling 2003) his
metaphor of “the third wave”. As Kurzman (1998) shows, the notion of “a
wave of democratization” can refer to three rather different phenomena: 1)
an increase in the level of democracy world-wide; 2) the number of
transitions to democracy being higher than the number of authoritarian
regressions in a particular period; 3) a pattern of linkages between
transitions.
Likewise, democratization can mean more than one thing. In the broadest
sense, democratization refers to any change in the direction of more
democracy, no matter how small. For example, Enterline (1996)
operationalizes democratization as an improvement of one point on the 21point Polity scale. In the narrow sense, democratization is synonymous with a
democratic transition. The notion of a democratic transition implies a change
of category and a dichotomous conceptualization of democracy. Munck
(2001b: 3425) defines a democratic transition as “the critical step.... when a
country passes a threshold marked by the introduction of competitive
elections with mass suffrage for the main political offices in the land”.2
Not everybody agrees with this. Taking the notion that “democracy is always
a matter of degree” to its logical extreme, Bollen and Jackman (1989: 618)
state that “it is meaningless to claim that democracy was inaugurated in a
given country on a single date”. Scholars who conceive democracy as a
matter of degree not merely view the distinction between democracy and
non-democracy in graded terms, as Collier and Adcock (1999: 546) contend,
but have done away with that distinction all-together, viewing democracy and
its absence as endpoints on a continuum on which any thresholds or
boundaries are arbitrary. Such “degreeism” (Sartori 1991) not only does away
with the notion of a democratic transition, it also negates the concept of
regime and regime type.
Huntington (1991) defines a democratic transition as the moment when at
least half the male citizens has the right to vote and the chief executive is
directly elected or depends on a majority in an elected parliament. Huntington
does not provide details on his coding decisions and sources and his
classification of democratic transitions stops in the late 1980s. Perhaps for
these reasons, Huntington’s classification of transitions has not been
2
On the other hand, Munck (2001a: 126) also points out that “democracy consists of various
attributes and that democratization can proceed at different paces along these distinct
attributes” and urges scholars to “move beyond the current view of democratic transitions as
involving a one-shot change, whereby transitions to democracy are conceived in aggregate
terms and consisting of one single point of inflection”.
5
frequently used in other studies. Instead, scholars have relied on the longer
time-series data of Polity, Freedom House, Przeworski et al., Gasiorowski,
Vanhanen, and, more recently, Doorenspleet.
There are by now many studies which compare the classifications of the
different measures of democracy (including Bogaards 2007a/b). Much more
rare is research comparing how different measures of democracy classify and
time democratic transitions. In dichotomous measures of democracy
(Przeworski et al. 2000; Doorenspleet 2000, 2005), democratization means a
democratic transition, reflected in a change from autocracy to democracy. In
trichotomous measures of democracy (Gasiorowski 1996; Reich 2002), a
transition to democracy can be defined in various ways: as a change from
autocracy to the intermediate category; as a change from the intermediate
category to democracy; as a change from autocracy to democracy; or a
combination of these. In continuous measures of democracy, a transition to
democracy can be identified in two ways. First, by establishing cut-off points
to create categories. Secondly, by defining democratic transition in terms of
the amount of change. Both routes have been pursued in the literature. Table
1 presents an overview of the main ways in which democratization has been
operationalized.
Table 1 about here
Change of categories
A common means to identify democratic transitions is through a change in the
categories devised by Freedom House and Polity themselves. Freedom House
distinguishes between free, partly free and not free countries based on a
country’s aggregate score on the twin indexes of political rights and civil
liberties.3 Some authors (Starr 1991; Starr and Lindborg 2003) have
operationalized a democratic transition as a change from the category of not
free to partly free or free.
The most widely used database for research on democratic transitions is
Polity. Usually, scholars use the combined scale which subtracts the authority
score (0-10) from a country’s democracy score (0-10), resulting in a scale
3
For a description of Freedom House methodology, see:
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=351&ana_page=333&year=2007.
4
6
ranging from –10 (complete autocracy) to +10 (complete democracy).
Jaggers and Gurr (1995), who are directly involved in the Polity project,
distinguish between “coherent” autocracies (-10 to -7), “incoherent polities”
or “anocracies” (-6 to +6) and “coherent” democracies (+7 to +10). Enterline
(1998) makes a further distinction between “incoherent autocracies” (-6 to 0)
and “incoherent democracies” (+1 to +6), resulting in twelve possible regime
change scenarios. In her analysis of regime change, Zanger (2000) uses the
same three categories as Polity, but draws the line differently (autocracy= –
10 to -4, anocracy= –3 to +3, democracy= +4 to +10). In their research on
the causes of democratic transitions, Epstein et al. (2006) distinguish between
autocracies (-10 to 0), partial democracies (+1 to +7) and full democracies
(+8 to +10). Some scholars only interested in democracy versus nondemocracy use the Polity scale, but set an alternative threshold at, for
example, +5 (Pevehouse 2002) or +6 (Reich 1999).
Russett (1993) multiplies the Polity score with the variable for domestic
concentration and categorize regimes as autocracy (-100 to –25), anocracy (24 to +29) and democracy (+30 to +100).5 Mansfield and Snyder (1995) use
this categorization to determine regime change. In a re-analysis of Mansfield
and Snyder (1995), Thompson and Tucker (1997) reconfigure Maoz and
Russett’s formula. Their regime taxonomy looks like this: 0.5 to 5 (autocracy),
5.5 to 9.5 (anocracy), 10 to 21 (democracy).
The hidden assumption in the analysis of regime change and democratic
transitions with the help of Polity or Freedom House categories is that these
categories correspond to regime types. However, there is little reason to
believe they do.6 The relationship between regime types and categories
derived by third parties from Polity and Freedom House data is even more
tenuous. That this is not perceived as a problem in the literature on
democratic transitions is probably due to the general absence of any
conception of regime or regime type. For example, Epstein et al. (2006) never
define their concept of “partial democracy”: they only provide a measure.
Gates et al. (2006: 898) do the same when they “define” a polity change as a
change in their indicators.
Doorenspleet (2000, 2005) stands out by her careful definition and
operationalization of democracy, autocracy, and democratic transition. She
supplements Polity data with information on voting rights to identify minimal
democracies in her analysis of the process and causes of democratization.
4
For a description of Polity methodology, see: http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/polity/. There are
many more ways to derive categories from Polity scores. Here I focus on categorizations
employed in research on regime change.
5
6
The variable “domestic concentration” is discussed in depth below.
See, Matthijs Bogaards, “From Degree to Type: The Difficult Art of Drawing the Line in
Continuous Measures of Democracy”.
7
Different from the rest of the literature, Doorenspleet does not use
aggregate scores, but substantively motivated minimum values on selected
Polity components.
The Political Regimes Database developed by Gasiorowski (1991, 1996)
distinguishes between democracies, authoritarian regimes and semidemocracies. The latter are described as regimes “in which a substantial
degree of political competition and freedom exist”, but where: 1) the effective
power of elected officials is limited, or; 2) the freedom and fairness of
elections are compromised, and/or; 3) civil and political liberties are limited
(Gasiorowski 1996: 471). A fourth category, of transitional regimes, is
devoted to regimes in the process of deliberate top-down regime change. All
the coding is done by the author himself, which he argues gives it “a high
degree of uniformity” (p.475). Data are available for 97 Third World countries
from independence until 1992. Gasiorowski (p.477) counts 29 transitions from
authoritarianism to semi-democracy - 49 when the transitional regimes are
also included, seven transitions from semi-democracy to democracy, and 10
transitions from authoritarianism to democracy – 28 if transitional regimes are
included as well. However, Gasiorowski admits these 28 regimes could also
have been classified as semi-democracies (p.477). This suggests that a
“transitional regime” is not a “regime” in fact, but a transitory phase and that
it is important to maintain this distinction. Reich (2002) updates the PRD to
1998 and extends its coverage to Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the
former Soviet Union. Because his coding rules deviate from Gasiorowski’s,
whose coding is in any case highly personal, the consistency of the codings is
likely to be weak.7
For their test of modernization theory, Przeworski et al. (2000) have devised a
dichotomous classification of regimes (democracy versus non-democracy)
based on elections and election outcomes. In his life-long search for the
determinants of democratization, Vanhanen (2003) developed a continuous
measure of democracy using election outcomes and election turnout which he
turns into a dichotomy by applying thresholds he admits to be arbitrary. Both
7
Especially problematic is Reich’s (2002) conceptualization and measurement of “semidemocracy”. His coding tree starts with a distinction between democracy and autocracy
based on the presence of meaningful elections. Based on the presence of flaws in other
dimensions of democracy, a democracy can be downgraded to the status of semi-democracy.
Surprisingly, an autocracy can be upgraded to a semi-democracy when despite the absence
of meaningful elections, the regime tolerates non-violent opposition, allows for criticism of its
leaders and policies in the media, and refrains from arresting or physically intimidating the
opposition. Instead of contaminating the category of semi-democracy, Reich should have
added the notion of “semi-authoritarianism” to capture such regimes, in line with recent
literature on “electoral authoritarianism” (Schedler 2006). For a review, see Matthijs
Bogaards, “How to Classify Hybrid Regimes? Defective Democracy and Electoral
Authoritarianism”, unpublished manuscript.
8
measures and their resulting classifications are frequently used by other
scholars.8
Change of scores
In a small number of studies, democratization is measured as a change in
scores, irrespective of any thresholds. In his re-analysis of Huntington (1991),
Kurzman (1998) operationalizes a democratic transition with Freedom House
as a change of one standard deviation, translating into an improvement of 2
points on the aggregate scale that runs from 1 (free) to 7 (not free).
Blomberg and Hess (2002) are more strict, demanding an improvement of 3
points. Using Polity, Kurzman (1998) classifies an improvement of 4 points as
a democratic transition, while Li (2006) sets the threshold at 3 points.
More examples could have been added had the table focused on regime
change and democratization more broadly instead of democratic transitions.
In the quantitative literature employing Polity data, it is quite common to find
the concept of regime change used to refer to any change on the Polity scale.
Such use either implies the authors conceive of each value on the 21-point
Polity scale as a different regime, or they do not have a concept of political
regime at all. Similarly, democratization is frequently used to refer to any
improvement on the Polity scale, no matter how small.9 Such use fails to
distinguish between liberalization and democratization and does away with
the notion of democratic transition.10
In sum, the literature often employs the concepts of regime change and
democratization in a loose fashion. The concept of a democratic transition is
more precise, but its appropriateness is contested by those who see
democracy as a matter of degree. Different ways exist to measure democratic
transitions empirically, most commonly through a change of categories.
However, these categories and their boundaries are often ill-defined.
8
For a theoretical and empirical critique of the way in which the measures of democracy of
Przeworski et al. (2000) and Vanhanen (2003) rely on election outcomes, see Bogaards
(2007a/b).
9
See below, in the paragraph entitled “Further testing”.
10
Schneider and Schmitter (2004) make a theoretical distinction between liberalization,
transition, and consolidation. However, their “liberalization of autocracy” scale with seven
items is not just applied to autocracies, but also used in combination with their consolidation
of democracy scale, under the assumption of “an underlying dimensional structure” (p.70).
9
Democratization and War
It is well known that democracies do not fight each other (Ray 1998). Going
back to Kant (1986) [1795] this is known as the “democratic peace thesis”.
Democracies do not go to war with each other because of democratic norms
and institutions (Russett 1993). But does this hold true for countries
undergoing a democratic transition? Recently, the claim has been made that
democratization actually increases the chances for interstate conflict
(Mansfield and Snyder 2005). The second part of the paper summarizes the
argument about emerging democracies going to war, briefly examines the
main positions in the debate about this controversial claim, and provides a
first, preliminary, test of the possible way in which the operationalization and
measurement of the independent variable, democratization, affects case
selection and empirical results.
The argument
In a series of publications Mansfield and Snyder (1995, 1996, 2002, 2005)
have made the claim that democratization leads to war. The initial argument
that both democratization and autocratization lead to war (Mansfield and
Snyder 1995), has since been restricted to democratization and refined
through a distinction between complete and incomplete democratization
(Mansfield and Snyder 2002) and the introduction of strength of institutions
as a second independent variable. The fine-tuning of their argument was
partly in response to the many critics.11 The full argument now states that
new, incomplete democracies with weak institutions are more prone to initiate
interstate wars (Mansfield and Snyder 2005).
Why is this so? The logic draws heavily on Huntington’s (1968) analysis of
political order in changing societies. At the heart of the problem as Mansfield
and Snyder (2005: 35) see it is the “combustible interaction between insecure
elites and energized masses”. The general argument is probably best
formulated in terms of the incentives faced by politicians. The bottom-line is
that politicians want to win elections or consolidate their hold on power. The
problem in incomplete democracies with weak institutions is that politicians
will be tempted to engage in “diversionary conflict” (p.36), promoting rivalry
abroad to strengthen their position at home. Nationalist appeals to the
masses are intended to strengthen the regime’s legitimacy. Politicians have an
interest in catering to parochial interests and will typically have short time
horizons. In an incomplete democracy with weak institutions, there are no
countervailing powers on politicians playing the nationalist card. Following this
logic, both (complete) democracy and strong institutions are necessary to
11
See, for example, the debate in the journal International Security with Wolf (1996), Weede
(1996), Enterline (1996) and the response by Mansfield and Snyder (1996), as well as the
critique by Thompson and Tucker (1997).
10
keep potentially belligerent rulers in check. If the mechanism of democratic
accountability is insufficiently strong because politicians can manipulate
elections, if the mechanism of checks and balances is weak because political
institutions are not strong enough and the flow of information is biased, and if
democratic norms are not sufficiently developed yet to constrain politicians
morally, then politicians can lead the country into a war of aggression for
political gain. This presupposes that there is a reservoir of nationalism
politicians can tap into, either of a general nature in the form of patriotism or
chauvinism or more specific sentiments in the context of incomplete state-and
nation-building (see Snyder 2000).
Policy implications
Mansfield and Snyder (2005: 11-12) are wary of a further global spread of
democracy, which would involve the more difficult cases that have so far
resisted democratization. Mansfield and Snyder expect these cases to be
poorer, more ethnically divided, ideologically more resistant to democracy,
with stronger authoritarian elites and weaker institutions. Botched
democratization in such countries will lead to “wars of democratization”, they
predict (p.12). Democratization is especially dangerous in the Middle-East and
China. With “Islamic public opinion” hostile to the US and Israel, its
“unleashing” through democratization “could only raise the likelihood of war”
(p.13). Put bluntly, “democratizing the Arab states is a major gamble in the
war on terror” (p.278). For China, the case is not made so clearly, but the
suggestion is that democratization would lead to political instability which
might tempt politicians to resort to nationalist appeals and aggressive foreign
policy (p.15). This leads one to conclude that it might be a good thing after all
the third wave is over.
Instead of promoting “premature democratization” (Mansfield and Snyder
2007: 7), democrats are advised by Mansfield and Snyder (2005: 16) “to
create favorable institutions in the sequence most likely to foster successful,
peaceful democratic transitions”. This includes the fixing of state boundaries,
strengthening the rule of law, building up a rational bureaucracy and impartial
courts, and professionalizing the media. The task of creating stronger
institutions that pave the way for democracy should be in the hands of “proreform leadership” which is not necessarily democratic or democratically
inclined itself. Only when the “necessary building blocks” (p.280) are in place
should priorities shift to the strengthening of representative institutions and
the “unleashing of mass political parties” (p.18). That is why they call their
approach “sequentialism”.
Needless to say, Mansfield and Snyder’s policy recommendations have
received substantial criticism. First of all, however reasonable sequentialism
may sound, there is little historical evidence that this is the way democracy
progressed, not even in Europe (Berman 2007a/b). As Berman (2007a: 38)
11
reminds us: “The idea that a gradual, liberal path to democracy exists and
that it makes sense to discourage countries that do not follow it from
democratizing is a chimera based on a misreading or misinterpretation of
history”. Secondly, there is little evidence to suggest that authoritarian leaders
are willing or able to build strong institutions that can pave the way for
democracy (Carothers 2007a/b). In fact, there is little incentive for
authoritarian leaders to build effective institutions that threaten their own
authority and circumscribe its exercise. As Carothers (2007b: 19) points out:
“Outside East Asia, autocratic governments in the developing world have a
terrible record as builders of competent, impartial institutions”. Citing South
Africa in the 1990s as a successful case of sequencing (Mansfield and Snyder
2007: 6) is perverse in light of the history of apartheid. Thirdly, in practice,
sequentialism may amount to little more than (continuing) support for
dictatorship under the cynical guise of democracy promotion. Fourth, it is not
clear how in today’s world a country could in the medium to long term
balance the conflicting demands of strengthening institutions while refusing
mass participation, preparing the grounds for democracy while keeping
democratic forces under tight control. In the words of Carothers (2007a: 23)
“people in many parts of the world want to attain political empowerment now,
not at some indefinite point in the future (emphasis in original)”. Instead of
sequentialism, Carothers (2007a/b) proposes “gradualism”, better understood
as “parallelism”, as it argues that processes of democratization and institution
building, even state-building, are reinforcing and best undertaken in
combination.
Finally, the focus on weak institutions should not obscure that Mansfield and
Snyder’s causal argument revolves about the interaction of two variables,
weak institutions in combination with incomplete democratization. Strangely
enough, nobody has suggested so far that part of the solution may also lie in
deepening incomplete democracies, in completing their incomplete transitions.
The recommendation would thus be to democratize more fully, to identify the
obstacles standing in the way of a complete transition, and to devise policies
to break down these barriers. To the extent that such an agenda overlaps
with strengthening institutions, it indicates that the two independent variables
are not independent of each other.
Independent variable: democratic transition
To classify democratic transitions, Mansfield and Snyder (1995, 1996, 2002,
2005) rely on Polity data, more precisely the Polity III dataset, because
differently from Polity IV it also includes a variable called “domestic
concentration”, which they use as a proxy for the strength of institutions.
Polity III data is available for 177 countries from 1800 to 1994. Mansfield and
Snyder (2005) use the combined scale and follow Jaggers and Gurr (1995)
distinction between “coherent” autocracies, “incoherent polities” or
“anocracies” and “coherent” democracies (see table 1), even though they
12
admit these thresholds are “arbitrary” (p.77). A democratic transition is
defined as “any fundamental transition in a democratic direction between t-6
and t-1” (p.78). A complete democratic transition occurs when a country
changes within a five year period from either an autocracy or anocracy to a
democracy. An incomplete transition occurs when a country changes within a
five year period from an autocracy to an anocracy. Democratic transitions are
thus defined in terms of changes between Polity categories. With this
operational definition Mansfield and Snyder (2005: 81) count 90 instances of
incomplete democratization, involving 64 countries, and 50 instances of
complete democratization, involving 35 countries, between 1816 and 1992.
In addition, Mansfield and Snyder measure democratization using three
individual Polity variables that make up its composite index: competitiveness
of participation, executive constraints, and openness of executive recruitment.
For all three variables, Mansfield and Snyder determine the levels that
correspond to the three regime types, again defining democratic transitions in
terms of a change of category. In their statistical analysis, Mansfield and
Snyder systematically report the results for all four measures of
democratization (the composite index and the three individual variables).
They find that “key differences exist between the measures of regime type...
[and] that transitions rarely occur in unison across the three component
indices” (Mansfield and Snyder 2005: 82/87).
Independent variable: institutions
In their early work Mansfield and Snyder (1995), following Maoz and Russett
(1993), multiply the strength of domestic institutions with the Polity score to
arrive at a regime classification and change between categories. In later work,
these variables are kept separate. Institutions are defined as “patterns of
repeated conventional behavior around which expectations converge”
(Mansfield and Snyder 2005: 44). Relevant institutions are administrative (a
non-corrupt bureaucracy, a police force that enforces the law) and those that
regulate political competition (impartial election commissions, well-organized
political parties, competent legislatures, and professional news media)
(Mansfield and Snyder 2005: 87). To gauge the strength of these institutions,
Mansfield and Snyder (2005) resort to the Polity III variable for “domestic
concentration”, described by the Polity handbook as “a composite ten-point
indicator of power concentration ... built on the regulation of participation,
regulation of executive recruitment, competitiveness of executive recruitment,
constraints on the chief executive, monocratism, and centralization of
authority” (p.39). As McFaul (2007: 162) points out, this is “an odd way to
measure the strength of political institutions”. First, because a concentration
of power is associated with non-democratic regimes. Second, because
regimes can have highly concentrated levels of decision-making, but still be
very ineffective. An even more serious problem is that 4 of the 6 variables
used to calculate the concentration index are democracy/autocracy variables,
13
together accounting for 7 of the possible 10 points a country can obtain on
this index. This means that the two independent variables in Mansfield and
Snyder’s model are not independent of each other (Daxeler 2007: 547). To
the extent that they do vary independently, this would be because of the
variables monocratism (individual versus collective executive) and
centralization of state authority (unitary versus federal states). These
variables, as should be clear, bear little relationship to the kind of
administrative and political institutions Mansfield and Snyder are interested in,
signaling a poor fit between the concept and its measurement.12
In their statistical analysis Mansfield and Snyder (2005: 112) aim to show that
the predicted probability of war for incomplete democratization is higher for
lower levels of domestic concentration. This is indeed so, but only for values
of domestic concentration under five. Beyond that, institutional strength
actually reduces the risk of war. This makes sense theoretically. However,
keeping in mind that domestic concentration is a very imperfect proxy for the
strength of administrative and democratic institutions, that the measure of
domestic concentration is made up of much the same factors as the
composite index of democracy in Polity, and that the statistical models use a
continuous measure for domestic concentration and a dummy variable for
democratization, one can suspect that domestic concentration mostly captures
the degree to which a country is democratic. The results should then be
reformulated as: the more democratic an incomplete democracy, the lower
the risk of war. This could be verified by adding degree of democracy to the
statistical model.
Dependent variable: war
The dependent variable in most of Mansfield and Snyder’s (2005: 91)
analyses is war, using the definitions and data from the Correlates of War
(COW) Project. International wars involve hostilities between members of the
interstate system that generate at least one thousand battle fatalities. A state
that suffers at least one hundred fatalities or sends at least one thousand
troops into combat is considered a participant. So-called extra-systemic wars
are imperial or colonial actions in which a nation-state engages in military
conflict against a non-state actor, leading to at least one-thousand battle
deaths. In the period 1816-1992 there have been 79 interstate wars and 108
extra-systemic wars involving a total of 88 different countries. In the case
studies in Mansfield and Snyder (20005) as well as in Snyder (2000) the
dependent variable is broadened to include civil war.
12
See the Polity III project information on:
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/cocoon/DDI/SAMPLES/06695.xml.
A re-examination of the main results
14
The statistical analysis at the monadic (individual states) and dyadic (pairs of
states) level confirms the theory, Mansfield and Snyder (2005) claim. This
section takes a closer look at those cases driving the results. Using the
composite index, there are 16 cases of war involving 13 countries. In line with
Mansfield and Snyder’s core argument, we focus here on 9 incomplete
democratizers involved in 11 interstate wars, shown in table 2.
Table 2 about here
Table 2 reveals some interesting facts. First, one country, the Ottoman
empire, is responsible for more than one-third of the wars. Second, only four
cases date from after WWII. Third, half of the cases, and even a majority if
we count the Ottoman empire between 1911 and 1913 as one case, have a
domestic concentration score of five or higher. This is the point where
Mansfield and Snyder claim institutions are so strong that the probability of
war in incomplete democratizers is not significantly raised compared to other
types of transition or the absence of regime change. This is true for all four
measure of democratization (Mansfield and Snyder 2005: 112-115). In
contrast, table 2 clearly shows a pattern of incomplete democratizers with
relatively strong institutions involved in war.13 Fourth, not one of the
incomplete democratizers initiated a war. Mansfield and Snyder (2005: 130)
purport that “analyses of war initiation are not in themselves adequate tests
of our theory”, because incomplete transitions may provoke external
intervention and because not all wars initiated by incomplete democratizers
exhibit their theory’s causal mechanism. They further admit that in explaining
war initiation, domestic concentration is insignificant. However, they still
maintain to have found a relationship between incomplete democratization
and war initiation, especially as the period over which regime change is
measured grows longer (p.134). Table 2, however, reveals that all incomplete
democratizers were involved in war because they were attacked, even though
Mansfield and Snyder (2005: 134) find “no evidence that states undergoing
transition toward democracy are disproportionately prone to being attacked”.
Finally, incomplete transitions were indeed highly incomplete. Only three
cases have a positive Polity score, and then only barely. This brings us back
to the question posed in the first part of the paper about the interpretation of
13
Mansfield and Snyder (2005: 131) acknowledge the possibility of this combination,
suggesting it is a less common scenario of powerful elites using a strong bureaucracy to
promote counterrevolutionary nationalism, exemplified by Germany before WWI (pp.171172).
15
category changes with Polity. Does it make sense to view a change from
absolute autocracy to a score of –6, as in the case of Austria-Hungary in 1848
or Iran in 1979, as a democratic transition, albeit an incomplete one? And
what happens to the results if a different measure of democratization is
employed? The final columns of table 2 show the codes for Vanhanen,
Doorenspleet, and Gasiorowski. The picture is clear. For Doorenspleet, none
of Mansfield and Snyder’s incomplete transitions qualify as a democratic
transition. For Vanhanen, only two cases pass his threshold of democracy,
due to multi-party elections in which a sizeable percentage of the population
participated and even though in both cases one party won handsomely.
Mansfield and Snyder could reply that this is to be expected, since Vanhanen
and Doorenspleet purport to establish a minimum for democracy while their
argument is precisely that these cases are incomplete democratizers.
Therefore, the final test comes from Gasiorowski, who includes the category
of “semi-democracy”. His data are not available for European countries or for
the Ottoman Empire. Still, none of the four cases that are covered in his
database are classified as even a “semi-democratizer”. The update and
extension of the dataset by Reich (2002) also has data for Yugoslavia. Again,
no transition is registered.
In sum, Mansfield and Snyder do not present a single case where incomplete
democratizers (on their main criterion, the composite index) initiate a war. Of
those incomplete democratizers involved in war, only three countries, involved
in five wars, display the combination with weak institutions Mansfield and
Snyder deem typical. Moreover, alternative measures disagree with the
classification of these cases as (incomplete) democratizers.
Case studies
In the second part of their book, Mansfield and Snyder select for closer
scrutiny ten cases of incomplete democratizers initiating war: France 18491870; Prussia/Germany 1848-1945; Chile 1879; Guatemala 1885 and 1906;
Serbia 1877, 1885, 1912, 1913; Thailand 1940; Iraq 1948-1949; and
Argentina 1982. None of these cases underwent an incomplete transition
according to Polity’s composite index.
The only war that France was involved in as an incomplete democratizer was
the 1849 intervention in the Roman republic. All other wars by Napoleon III
were fought after his regime turned authoritarian again. Prussia/Germany
democratized, incompletely, only in 1871, after the four wars that Mansfield
and Snyder attribute to the democratization process in this country. Chile had
been an incomplete democracy for three decades when it attacked Peru and
Bolivia in the 1879 “war of the pacific”. Guatemala is discounted by Mansfield
and Snyder (2005: 206) themselves as proof of their theory, citing instead
weak states and state boundaries as the cause for the frequent outbreak of
war in Central America in that period. The four Balkan wars involving Serbia
16
prior to WWI all took place at least 8 years after any transition to an
incomplete democracy. The attack by Thailand of Vichy French territories
nicely corroborates the theory’s emphasis on the political use of nationalism,
but has little to do with democracy and more with opportunism, Mansfield and
Snyder (2005: 213) admit. Mansfield and Snyder make much of what they see
as the extraordinary belligerent posture of Iraq in the 1948-1949 Palestine
wars, attributing this to the need of a government under pressure to outbid
rivals. Iraq was indeed an incomplete democracy at the time, but had been so
for more than two decades. And the most recent change in Polity scores
before the war was a one-point change in the direction of more
authoritarianism. If Mansfield and Snyder want to argue that democracy in
the Middle East is dangerous because even moderate politicians will be
coerced into a bidding war faced with electoral pressure from nationalists and
extremists, they should explain why Iraq was more militant than Egypt and
Syria, even though both countries were more democratic at the time. Finally,
the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands islands in 1982 occurred before the
transition to democracy. Many would say this military disaster in fact
prompted democratization. To argue that the invasion was motivated by an
anticipation of democratization on the part of general Galtieri seems
speculative and the claim that Argentina was a “partially liberalizing
authoritarian regime” is not supported by Polity scores, which record a very
modest improvement from –9 to –8 in 1981.
In sum, bearing in mind that these cases were selected to demonstrate the
causal link between democratization and war and that none of them qualify as
incomplete democratizers based on Polity’s composite index, the results are
disappointing.
In the 1990s, Mansfield and Snyder (2005; see also Snyder 2000) flag six
interstate wars and four civil wars involving democratizing nations. These
include the war between post-Soviet Armenia and Azerbaijan about NagornoKarabach (1992), the 1995 war between Peru and Ecuador, the 1998 war
between Eritrea and Ethiopia, the 1999 war between Pakistan and India in
Kashmir, the 1991 and 1999 (Kosovo) wars involving Serbia, the civil wars of
Burundi (1993) and Rwanda (1994), and the two Russian invasions in
Chechnya (1994, 1999). The narrative seeks to highlight the role of
democratization in all of these cases. No attempt is made to systematically
test their theory on these cases, or to compare these instances of violence
with peaceful democratizing countries, to pinpoint the conditions under which
democratizers turn violent against their own population or against neighboring
countries. Moreover, there again is much doubt about the qualification of
many of these cases as “democratizers”.
With respect to the case studies in Mansfield and Snyder (2005), McFaul
(2007: 164) argues that “most of them are not cases of ‘democratizing’
states, but instead cases of regime collapse or a return to autocracy”. As
McFaul (p.161) points out, “Electing to Fight is not about ‘why emerging
17
democracies go to war’, but rather about ‘why failed democratic transitions,
under very special circumstances lead to war some of the time’”. Even this
may be an overstatement. None of the incomplete democratizers (using the
composite index) initiated war. Moreover, many of the so-called incomplete
democratic transitions are not failed transitions at all, but at best cases of
regime liberalization. The argument therefore should sound more like “why
liberalizing autocracies get attacked, sometimes”.
Further testing
From the very beginning of the debate about the proposition that
democratization leads to war, scholars have challenged Mansfield and
Snyder’s findings using different measures and databases for the independent
variable. The choices reflect the general approaches as reviewed in the first
part of this paper. That is, democratization is either viewed as a change of
category or as a change in democracy scores of a particular magnitude in a
particular direction. The latter operationalization is the more common.
Wolf (1996: 177) uses Freedom House and defines “rapid progress to
democracy” as “an average improvement of more than 2.0 in the combined
Freedom House ratings over a three-year period”. However, Wolf only uses
this alternative measure of democratization to check for a relationship with
violent conflict in the post-communist states of Eastern Europe. McFaul (2007)
calculates the number of transitions and the percentage of new democracies
involved in war with the help of Freedom House, but does not systematically
reassess the classification or findings by Mansfield and Snyder.
Ward and Gleditsch (1998; see also Gleditsch and Ward 2000) examine the
impact of the amount, direction, and variance of change in Polity scores on
the probability of interstate war. They conclude that change towards
democracy reduces the likelihood of war and that more democratic change
consistently results in less war. The more variance of change a country goes
through, however, the more likely war. Daxecker (2007) confirms these
results for Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs), described as “cases in which
the threat, display or use of military force short of war by one member state
is explicitly directed towards the government, official representatives, official
forces, property or territory of another state” (Jones et al. 1996: 168). For
these scholars and others (Enterline 1996) “regime change” simply means any
change on the Polity scale and “democratization” is any change towards the
democratic end of that scale.
Less frequent is the use of democratization as a change of categories in the
critiques of Mansfield and Snyder, perhaps because this is the method they
employ themselves and because in any case the quantitative literature prefers
continuous measures. Clare (2007) uses change in Przeworski et al.’s (2000)
dichotomous measure of democracy as the independent variable and MIDs as
18
the dependent variable. The choice for Przeworski’s categorical variable is
intended to differentiate liberalization from “genuine democratization”
(p.267), but this distinction is not further developed in the empirical analysis.
Enterline (1998) makes a theoretical distinction between incoherent
democracies and autocracies, but lumps them together in the empirical
analysis. Thompson and Tucker (1997) are alone in reporting results for a reanalysis of Mansfield and Snyder (1995) with a different categorical
independent variable that was described above in the first part of the paper.
Therefore, no systematic re-evaluation of Mansfield and Snyder’s classification
and its possible impact on the empirical results exists so far.
Conclusion
This paper has provided a first overview of the ways in which regime change,
democratization, and democratic transition have been defined and
operationalized in the literature on the third wave of democratization using
widely available databases with regime characteristics and regime
classifications. The re-examination of the main cases in Mansfield and
Snyder’s (2005) argument that new, incomplete democracies with weak
institutions are showing an increased likekihood of going to war has indicated
the importance of choices made in the conceptualization and measurement of
democratization.
However, much work remains to be done. First, the overview of the ways in
which democratic transition has been captured through changes in categories
and scores that was presented in table 1 is incomplete without an
accompanying analysis of the resulting classifications and timing of
transitions. Second, a more systematic re-examination of Mansfield and
Snyder’s argument is necessary, re-running their analysis with alternative
measures for the independent variable of (incomplete) democratization using
the full range of definitions and specifications available in the literature. Third,
the keys concepts of liberalization, democratization, regime change, and
democratic transitions, need to be defined and operationalized more precisely,
along the lines of Schedler’s (1998) conceptual clarification of democratic
consolidation. These are all tasks that have to be left to future versions of this
paper.
19
References
Berman, Sheri (2007a) Lessons from Europe, Journal of Democracy 18(1), 2841.
Berman, Sheri (2007b) The Vain Hope for “Correct” Timing, Journal of
Democracy 18(3), 14-16.
Blomberg, Brock and Gregory Hess (2002) The Temporal Links between
Conflict and Economic Activity, Journal of Conflict Resolution 46(1), 74-90.
Bogaards, Matthijs (2007a) Elections, Election Outcomes and Democracy in
Southern Africa, Democratization, 14(1), 73-91.
Bogaards, Matthijs (2007b) Measuring Democracy through Election
Outcomes: A Critique with African Data, Comparative Political Studies, 40(10),
1211-1237.
Bollen, Kenneth and Robert Jackman (1989) Democracy, Stability, and
Dichotomies, American Sociological Review 54(4), 612-621.
Carothers, Thomas (2007a) The “Sequencing” Fallacy, Journal of Democracy
18(1), 12-27.
Carothers, Thomas (2007b) Misunderstanding Gradualism, Journal of
Democracy, 18(3), 18-22.
Clare, Joe (2007) Democratization and International Conflict: The Impact of
Institutional Legacies, Journal of Peace Research 44(3), 259-276.
Collier, David and Robert Adcock (1999) Democracy and Dichotomies: A
Pragmatic Approach to Choices about Concepts, Annual Review of Political
Science 2, 537-565.
Daxecker, Ursula (2007) Perilous Politics? An Assessment of the
Democratization-Conflict Linkage, European Journal of International Relations
13(4), 527-553.
Doorenspleet, Renske (2000) Reassessing the Three Waves of
Democratization, World Politics 52(3), 384-406.
Doorenspleet, Renske (2005) Exploring the Structural Sources of the Fourth
Wave. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
Enterline, Andrew (1996) Driving While Democratizing (DWD), International
Security 20(4), 183-196.
20
Enterline, Andrew (1998) Regime Change and Interstate Conflict, 1816-1992,
Political Research Quarterly 51(2), 385-409.
Epstein, David, Robert Bates, Jack Goldstone, Ida Kristensen, and Sharyn
O’Halloran (2006) Democratic Transitions, American Journal of Political
Science 50(3), 551-569.
Gasiorowski, Mark (1991) The Political Regimes Project, in Alex Inkeles (ed.)
On Measuring Democracy: Its Consequences and Concomitants. New
Brunswick/London: Transaction Publishers, 105-121.
Gasiorowski, Mark (1996) An Overview of the Political Regime Change
Dataset, Comparative Political Studies 29(4), 469-483.
Gates, Scott, Håvard Hegre, Mark Jones, Håvard Strand (2006) Institutional
Inconsistency and Political Instability: Polity Duration, 1800-2000, American
Journal of Political Science 50(4), 893-908.
Gleditsch, Kristian and Michael Ward (2000) War and Peace in Time and
Space: The Role of Democratization, International Studies Quarterly 44, 1-29.
Huntington, Samuel (1968) Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven,
CN: Yale University Press.
Huntington, Samuel (1991) The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late
Twentieth Century. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
Jaggers, Keith and Ted Gurr (1995) Tracking Democracy’s Third Wave with
the Polity III data, Journal of Peace Research 32(4), 469-482.
Jones, Daniel, Stuart Bremer, and David Singer (1996) Militarized Interstate
Disputes, 1816-1992: Rationale, Coding Rules and Empirical Patterns: Conflict
Management and Peace Science 15, 163-213.
Kant, Immanuel (1986) [1795] Perpetual Peace, in Ernest Behler (ed.)
Immanuel Kant: Philosophical Writings. New York: Continuum, pp.270-311.
Kurzman, Charles (1998) Waves of Democratization, Studies in Comparative
International Development 33(1), 42-64.
Li, Quan (2006) Democracy, Autocracy, and Tax Incentives to Foreign Direct
Investors: A Cross-National Analysis, Journal of Politics 68(1), 62-74.
Mansfield, Edward and Jack Snyder (1995) Democratization and the Danger
of War, International Security 20(1), 5-38.
21
Mansfield, Edward and Jack Snyder (1996) The Effects of Democratization
on War, International Security 20(4), 196-207.
Mansfield, Edward and Jack Snyder (2002) Incomplete Democratization and
the Outbreak of Military Disputes, International Studies Quarterly 46, 520549.
Mansfield, Edward and Jack Snyder (2005) Electing to Fight: Why Emerging
Democracies go to War. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mansfield, Edward and Jack Snyder (2007) The Sequencing “Fallacy”, Journal
of Democracy 18(3), 5-16.
McFaul, Michael (2007) Are New Democracies War-Prone? Book review of
Mansfield and Snyder (2005), Journal of Democracy 18(2), 160-167.
Munck, Gerardo (2001a) The Regime Question: Theory Building in Democracy
Studies, World Politics 54(1), 119-144.
Munck, Gerardo (2001b) Democratic Transitions, in Neil Smelser and Paul
Bates (eds.) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences
5. New York: Elsevier, pp.3425-3428.
Pevehouse, Jon (2002) With a Little Help from My Friends? Regional
Organizations and the Consolidation of Democracy, American Journal of
Political Science 46(3), 611–26.
Przeworski, Adam, Mike Alvarez, José Cheihub, and Fernando Limongi (2000)
Democracy and Development: Political institutions and Well-being in the
World, 1950-1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ray, James Lee (1998) Does Democracy Cause Peace? Annual Review of
Political Science 1, 27-46.
Reich, Gary (1999) Coordinating Restraint: Democratization, Fiscal Policy and
Money Creation in Latin America, Political Research Quarterly 52(4), 729–51.
Reich, Gary (2002) Categorizing Political Regimes: New Data for Old
Problems, Democratization 9(4), 1-24.
Russett, Bruce (1993) Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a PostCold War World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Schedler, Andreas (1998) What is Democratic Consolidation? Journal of
Democracy 9(2), 91-107.
Schedler, Andreas (ed.) (2006a) Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics
of Unfree Competition. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.
22
Sartori, Giovanni (1991) Comparing and Miscomparing, Journal of Theoretical
Politics 3, 243-257.
Schneider, Carsten and Philippe Schmitter (2004) Liberalization, Transition
and Consolidation: Measuring the Components of Democratization,
Democratization 11(5), 59-90.
Snyder, Jack (2000) From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist
Conflict. New York: Norton.
Starr, Harvey (1991) Democratic Dominoes: Diffusion Approaches to the
Spread of Democracy in the International System, Journal of Conflict
Resolution 35, 356-381.
Starr, Harvey and Christina Lindborg (2003) Democratic Dominoes Revisited:
The Hazards of Governmental Transitions, 1974-96, Journal of Conflict
Resolution 47(4), 490-519.
Thompson, William and Richard Tucker (1997) A Tale of Two Democratic
Peace Critiques, Journal of Conflict Resolution 41(3), 428-454.
Vanhanen, Tatu (2003) Democratization: A Comparative Analysis of 170
Countries. London: Routledge.
Ward, Michael and Kristian Gleditsch (1998) Democratizing for Peace,
American Political Science Review 92(1), 51-61.
Weede, Erich (1996) Democratization and the Danger of War, International
Security 20(4), 180-183.
Wolf, Reinhard (1996) Democratization and the Danger of War, International
Security 20(4), 176-180.
Zimmerling, Ruth (2003) Samuel Huntington’s demokratische Wellen: viel
Lärm um Gischt?, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 44(2), 196-216.
23
Table 1 Measures of regime change and democratic transition
Change of categories
Measure
Specification
Author(s)
Change of scores
Measure
Specification
Author(s)
1
Freedom
House
FH categories
Starr (1991)
Starr and Lindborg (2003)
Freedom
House
Improvement of 2 points
Improvement of 3 points
Kurzman (1998)
Blomberg and Hess (2002)
2
Polity
Polity categories
Mansfield and Snyder (2005)
Polity
Own categories
based on Polity
scale
Enterline (1998)
Zanger (2000)
Epstein et al. (2006)
Improvement of 3 points
Improvement of 4 points
Li (2006)
Kurzman (1998)
Polity scale with
different threshold
Reich (1999)
Pevehouse (2002)
Own categories
based on Polity
scale and DomCon
Russett (1993)
Thompson and Tucker (1997)
Own categories
based on Polity
with additional
data
Doorenspleet (2000, 2005)
3
Gasiorowski
Gasiorowski (1996)
4
Przeworski et
al.
Vanhanen
Przeworski et al. (2000)
5
Vanhanen (2003)
24
Table 2 Incomplete democratizing countries and interstate war
Case
Country
name
1
2
Spain
AustriaHungary
Ottoman
Empire
Ottoman
Empire
3
4a
4b
4c
5
6
7
8
9
Ottoman
Empire
Ottoman
Empire
Yugoslavia
South Korea
Pakistan
Cambodia
Iran
Year of
Polity
transition score
before
1820
-9
1848
-10
Polity
score
after
-4
-6
Polity
DomCon
score
War
Started
war?
Democratizer
for Vanhanen?
Democratizer for
Doorenspleet?
2
7
1823
1849
No
No
No
No
No
No
(Semi-)
democratizer for
Gasiorowski?
N.a.
N.a.
1876
-10
-4
5
1877
No
No
No
N.a.
1908
-10
-4
-2
(1909
)
3
2
(1909)
1911
No
No
No
N.a.
1912
No
N.a.
1913
No
N.a.
1941
1965
1965
1975
1980
No
No
No
No
No
1939
1963
1962
1972
1979
-9
-7
-7
-9
-10
+2
+3
+1
-5
-6
7
6
2
6
5
No
Yes
No
No
Yes
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
Source: This list is based on the appendix in Mansfield and Snyder (2005: 285), but excludes two extra-systemic wars (Great Britain 1885 and France 1947)
as well as three cases of complete democratizers involved in war (Great Britain 1882, Belgium 1914, Turkey 1950). Data on war initiation from the COW
Project, at: http://www.correlatesofwar.org/. Data for the Polity concentration index were found on: http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~ksg/polity.html. Scores
were calculated with the help of the Polity II Code Book found on the same website. For Iran, following Mansfield and Snyder (2005), Polity III codings were
used, although they have been corrected in Polity IV. Data on democratic transitions from: http://www.prio.no/cwp/vanhanen/, Doorenspleet (2005),
Gasiorowski (1996) and Reich (2002).