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Democracy and dictatorship revisited

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Abstract

We address the strengths and weaknesses of the main available measures of political regime and extend the dichotomous regime classification first introduced in Alvarez et al. (Stud. Comp. Int. Dev. 31(2):3–36, 1996). This extension focuses on how incumbents are removed from office. We argue that differences across regime measures must be taken seriously and that they should be evaluated in terms of whether they (1) serve to address important research questions, (2) can be interpreted meaningfully, and (3) are reproducible. We argue that existing measures of democracy are not interchangeable and that the choice of measure should be guided by its theoretical and empirical underpinnings. We show that the choice of regime measure matters by replicating studies published in leading journals.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    José Antonio Cheibub

  2. Department of Political Science, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA

    Jennifer Gandhi

  3. Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 20057, USA

    James Raymond Vreeland

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  1. José Antonio Cheibub
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  2. Jennifer Gandhi
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Correspondence to José Antonio Cheibub.

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Cheibub, J.A., Gandhi, J. & Vreeland, J.R. Democracy and dictatorship revisited. Public Choice 143, 67–101 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-009-9491-2

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