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Learning about Growth and Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2020

SCOTT F. ABRAMSON  and
SERGIO MONTERO Open the ORCID record for SERGIO MONTERO [Opens in a new window]
SCOTT F. ABRAMSON*
Affiliation:
University of Rochester
SERGIO MONTERO*
Affiliation:
University of Rochester
*
Scott F. Abramson, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Rochester, [email protected].
Sergio Montero, Assistant Professor, Departments of Political Science and Economics, University of Rochester, [email protected].
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Abstract

We develop and estimate a model of learning that accounts for the observed correlation between economic development and democracy and for the clustering of democratization events. In our model, countries’ own and neighbors’ past experiences shape elites’ beliefs about the effects of democracy on economic growth and their likelihood of retaining power. These beliefs influence the choice to transition into or out of democracy. We show that learning is crucial to explaining observed transitions since the mid-twentieth century. Moreover, our model predicts reversals to authoritarianism if the world experienced a growth shock the size of the Great Depression.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 114 , Issue 4 , November 2020 , pp. 1195 - 1212
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

We thank Tasos Kalandrakis, Didac Queralt, Matt Shum, Erik Snowberg, Jörg Spenkuch, Fabrizio Zilibotti, and audiences at Kellogg MEDS, Princeton, Vanderbilt, NYU, the 2018 Banff Empirical Microeconomics Workshop, SIOE 2018, APSA 2018, and the 2018 Formal Theory and Comparative Politics Conference for very helpful comments. Anna Walsdorff provided excellent research assistance. Replication files are available at the American Political Science Review Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/EPDD6F.

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https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/EPDD6F
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