lied: The Lexical Index of Democracy, v. 3

In xmarquez/AuthoritarianismBook: Replication Package for the Book Non-Democratic Politics by Xavier Marquez

Description

The Lexical Index of Democracy described in Skaaning, Svend-Erik; John Gerring; and Henrikas Bartusevicius (2015). "A Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy." Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 48, No. 12, pp. 1491-1525. Original data and variable descriptions available at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/29106.

Usage

lied

Format

An object of class tbl_df (inherits from tbl, data.frame) with 18529 rows and 24 columns.

Variable descriptions

country_name

Standardized country name. This is the same across all datasets in this package, so you can always join them by country_name and year. Character with 223 distinct values. Most common: Afghanistan (216), China (216), Iran (Persia) (216), Nepal (216), Oman (216), Portugal (216), Russia (Soviet Union) (216), Spain (216), Sweden (216), Thailand (216), Turkey (Ottoman Empire) (216), United Kingdom (216), United States of America (216). NAs = 0.

year

Year. Numeric. Max = 2015, min = 1800, distinct = 216, mean = 1938.909, sd = 61.632, NAs = 0.

GWn

Gleditsch-Ward numeric country code. See Gleditsch and Ward (1999). Numeric. Max = 990, min = 2, distinct = 223, mean = 411.658, sd = 259.849, NAs = 0.

male_suffrage

Virtually all male citizens are allowed to vote in national elections. Legal restrictions pertaining to age, criminal conviction, incompetence, and local residency are not considered. Informal restrictions such as those obtaining in the American South prior to 1965 are also not considered. Numeric. Max = 1, min = 0, distinct = 2, mean = 0.632, sd = 0.482, NAs = 0.

female_suffrage

Virtually all female citizens are allowed to vote in national elections. Similar coding rules apply. Numeric. Max = 1, min = 0, distinct = 2, mean = 0.537, sd = 0.499, NAs = 0.

exselec

The chief executive is either directly or indirectly elected (i.e., chosen by people who have been elected) Numeric. Max = 1, min = 0, distinct = 2, mean = 0.641, sd = 0.48, NAs = 0.

legselec

A legislative body issues at least some laws and does not perform executive functions. The lower house (or unicameral chamber) of the legislature is at least partly elected. The legislature has not been closed. Numeric. Max = 1, min = 0, distinct = 2, mean = 0.741, sd = 0.438, NAs = 0.

opposition

The lower house (or unicameral chamber) of the legislature is (at least in part) elected by voters facing more than one choice. Specifically, parties are not banned and (a) more than one party is allowed to compete or (b) elections are nonpartisan (i.e., all candidates run without party labels) Numeric. Max = 1, min = 0, distinct = 2, mean = 0.594, sd = 0.491, NAs = 0.

competition

The chief executive offices and seats in the effective legislative body are filled by elections characterized by uncertainty (see Przeworski 2000: 16- 17), meaning that the elections are, in principle, sufficiently free to enable the opposition to gain power if they were to attract sufficient support from the electorate. This presumes that control over key executive and legislative offices is determined by elections, the executive and members of the legislature have not been unconstitutionally removed, and the legislature has not been dissolved. With respect to the electoral process, this presumes that the constitutional timing of elections has not been violated (in a more than marginal fashion), non-extremist parties are not banned, opposition candidates are generally free to participate, voters experience little systematic coercion in exercising their electoral choice, and electoral fraud does not determine who wins. With respect to the outcome, this presumes that the declared winner of executive and legislative elections reflects the votes cast by the electorate, as near as can be determined from extant sources. Incumbent turnover (as a result of multi-party elections) is regarded as a strong indicator of competition, but is neither necessary nor sufficient. In addition, we rely on reports from outside observers (as reported in books, articles, and country reports) about whether the foregoing conditions have been met in a given election (see Svolik 2012: 24). Coding for this variable does not take into account whether there is a level playing field, whether all contestants gain access to funding and media, whether media coverage is unbiased, whether civil liberties are respected, or other features associated with fully free and fair elections. COMPETITION thus sets a modest threshold. Numeric. Max = 1, min = 0, distinct = 2, mean = 0.349, sd = 0.477, NAs = 0.

lexical_index

To generate the lexical index from these six binary variables, a country-year is assigned the highest score (L0-6) for which it fulfills all requisite criteria, as follows:

L0: LEGSELEC=0 & EXSELEC=0.

L1: LEGSELEC=1 or EXSELEC=1.

L2: LEGSELEC=1 & OPPOSITION=1.

L3: LEGSELEC=1 & OPPOSITION=1 & EXSELEC=1.

L4: LEGSELEC=1 & OPPOSITION=1 & EXSELEC=1 & COMPETITION=1.

L5: LEGSELEC=1 & OPPOSITION=1 & EXSELEC=1 & COMPETITION=1 & (MALE SUFFRAGE=1 or FEMALE SUFFRAGE=1).

L6: LEGSELEC=1 & OPPOSITION=1 & EXSELEC=1 & COMPETITION=1 & MALE SUFFRAGE=1 & FEMALE SUFFRAGE=1. Numeric. Max = 6, min = 0, distinct = 7, mean = 2.783, sd = 2.346, NAs = 0.

regime

A character version of lexical_index. Coded as follows:

0 = nonelectoral,

1 = one- or no- party elections,

2 = limited competition multiparty elections for legislature only,

3 = Limited competition multiparty elections for both executive and legislature (with or without universal suffrage),

4 = Competitive elections for executive and legislative, limited suffrage,

5 = Male democracy,

6 = Electoral democracy. Character with 7 distinct values. Most common: Electoral democracy (5106), Limited competition multiparty electi... (4546), Nonelectoral (4504). NAs = 0.

lied_country

Country name in the original dataset. Character with 229 distinct values. Most common: Afghanistan (216), China (216), Iran (216), Nepal (216), Oman (216), Portugal (216), Spain (216), Sweden (216), Thailand (216), United Kingdom (216), United States (216). NAs = 0.

GWc

Gleditsch-Ward alphabetic country code. See Gleditsch and Ward (1999). Character with 223 distinct values. Most common: AFG (216), CHN (216), IRN (216), NEP (216), OMA (216), POR (216), RUS (216), SPN (216), SWD (216), THI (216), TUR (216), UKG (216), USA (216). NAs = 0.

cown

Correlates of War numeric country code. Differs from GWn for a few country-years. See Gleditsch and Ward (1999). Numeric. Max = 990, min = 2, distinct = 222, mean = 411.524, sd = 259.55, NAs = 0.

polity_ccode

Country code in Polity datasets. Differs from GWn for a few country-years. See Gleditsch and Ward (1999). Numeric. Max = 990, min = 2, distinct = 230, mean = 411.502, sd = 259.536, NAs = 0.

region

Region. Character with 23 distinct values. Most common: South America (2019), Southern Europe (1554), Western Europe (1829). NAs = 0.

continent

Continent. Character with 5 distinct values. Most common: Americas (4514), Asia (4299), Europe (5527). NAs = 0.

GW_startdate

Date at which the state entered the system of states according to Gleditsch and Ward, or NA if it has never been a member. Date. Max = 2011-07-09, min = 1816-01-01, distinct = 170, NAs = 0.

GW_enddate

Date at which the state ceased to be a member of the system of states according to Gleditsch and Ward, or NA if it still exists. Date. Max = 2006-06-04, min = 1830-07-05, distinct = 30, NAs = 16116.

microstate

Indicator of whether the state is a microstate, according to Gleditsch's list of microstates. Logical. TRUE = 739, FALSE = 17790, NAs = 0.

lat

Latitude. Numeric. Max = 64.963, min = -40.901, distinct = 219, mean = 21.631, sd = 25.355, NAs = 0.

lon

Longitude. Numeric. Max = 178.68, min = -175.198, distinct = 219, mean = 8.491, sd = 67.904, NAs = 0.

in_cow

Whether the country-year is in the Correlates of War system of states. Logical. TRUE = 16277, FALSE = 2252, NAs = 0.

in_system

Whether the country-year is in the Gleditsch-Ward system of states. See Gleditsch and Ward (1999). Logical. TRUE = 17993, FALSE = 536, NAs = 0.

References

Gleditsch, Kristian S. & Michael D. Ward. 1999. "Interstate System Membership: A Revised List of the Independent States since 1816." International Interactions 25: 393-413. The list can be found at http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~ksg/statelist.html

Skaaning, Svend-Erik; John Gerring; and Henrikas Bartusevicius (2015). "A Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy." Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 48, No. 12, pp. 1491-1525.

See Also

Other democracy: all_gwf_extended_yearly, democracy, extended_uds, kailitz_yearly, magaloni, polity_annual, vdem, wahman_teorell

Other institutions: PIPE, democracy_mentions_yearly, svolik_institutions

Other regime characteristics: PIPE, all_gwf_extended_yearly, all_gwf_periods, all_gwf, kailitz_yearly, magaloni_extended, magaloni, polity_annual, svolik_institutions, wahman_teorell

xmarquez/AuthoritarianismBook documentation built on May 4, 2019, 1:24 p.m.