Do Output Contractions Trigger Democratic Change?

By Paul J. Burke, Andrew Leigh. Social Science Research Network, 2010

209 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Does faster economic growth increase pressure for democratic change, or reduce it? Using data for 154 countries for the period 1963-2007, we examine the short-run relationship between economic growth and moves toward and away from greater democracy. To address the potential endogeneity of economic growth, we use variation in precipitation, temperatures, and commodity prices as instruments for a country’s rate of economic growth. Our results indicate that more rapid economic growth reduces the short-run likelihood of institutional change toward democracy. Output contractions due to adverse weather shocks appear to have a particularly important impact on the timing of democratic change.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bed51addfa71471ab9def284d931741ba84eec62

Citations in the corpus

• The Effects of Weather Shocks on Economic Activity: What are the Channels of Impact? (2018, unknown): “Forcible removal of rulers has also been linked to fluctuations in climate (Dell, Jones, and Olken 2012; Kim 2014; Burke and Leigh 2010; Chaney 2013), and several historical cases of societal collapse have been compellingly attributed to climate change (Cullen et al. 2000; Haug et al. 2003; Buckley…”
• Food Prices and Political Instability (2011, unknown): “Recent empirical evidence by Bruckner and Ciccone (2010b) and Burke and Leigh (2010) on the effects of rainfall shocks on democratic change in Africa has provided supportive empirical evidence for the Acemoglu and Robinson theory.”
• Democratization Under the Threat of Revolution: Evidence From the Great Reform Act of 1832 (2015, unknown): “As a result, empirical research usually tests the theory indirectly, either by relating economic shocks to democratic change (Burke and Leigh, 2010; Brückner and Ciccone, 2011; Chaney, 2013; Franck, forthcoming, Aidt and Leon, forthcoming) or by assessing whether the immediate consequences of…”
• Quantifying the Influence of Climate on Human Conflict (2013, unknown): “Fourth, many analyses are not explicitly focused on the direct effect of climate on conflict but instead use climatic variations instrumentally (25, 35, 48, 71, 77) or account for it as an ancillary covariate in their analysis [e.”
• Workers of the World, Unite! Franchise Extensions and the Threat of Revolution in Europe, 1820-1938 (2014, unknown): “Previous work by Brückner and Ciccone (2011) and Burke and Leigh (2010) establish causal links between economic shocks and democratic change which are consistent with the theory.”
• Temperature Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century (2012, unknown): “Burke and Leigh (2010) also find that output contractions associated with weather shocks affect the timing of democratic change. observe.”
• Resource Windfalls, Political Regimes, and Political Stability (2016, unknown): “Many authors have investigated the causal relationship between income and democracy (Barro, 1999; Epstein et al., 2006; Ulfelder & Lustik, 2007; Glaeser, Ponzetto, & Shleifer, 2007; Acemoglu et al., 2008; Brückner & Ciccone, 2010; Burke & Leigh, 2010).”