1. What role do international organizations play in promoting democracy?
READING ASSIGNMENT:
Pevehouse, Jon C Democracy from the Outside-In? International Organizations and Democratization. International Organization 56:3:

2. Plan Democratic peace What causes democracy? Economic explanation
Effect of Regional Organizations
Other stories

3. The effect of IOs on democracy….
Obviously intrinsically important for a class on IO’s
And it’s also part of a larger theme…

4. The Democratic Peace Reading from this class Reading from last class
Democracy
Reading from this class
Peace
War
International Trade
International Organizations
Reading from last class

7. What causes democracy? Analytical tool time…

8. Today is really about what causes democracy…
One of the strongest correlates of democracy:
PER CAPITA INCOME (economic development)…
Why?
Puzzle time!
Explain the correlation between development (per cap income) and democracy.

9. HINTS Development does NOT cause democracy to emerge.
Democracy does NOT cause development.
The correlation is NOT spurious.
(There is a causal connection.)

10. One of the strongest correlates of democracy: Why?
PER CAPITA INCOME (economic development)…
Why?
Democracy causes development?
Mixed evidence (seems to change every decade)
Spurious?
Maybe… yet there does seem to be a causal connection
Development causes democracy to EMERGE?
Evidence is weak
Development causes democracy to SURVIVE!
One of the strongest findings in comparative politics

11. Think DYNAMICALLY Don’t just look at correlations Consider
Onset
Continuation
In this article we consider onset/emergence
In other work, Pevehouse addresses continuation/survival

12. Basic Stata commands regress y x regress y x if ylag==0
Pevehouse, Jon C Democracy from the Outside-In? International Organizations and Democratization. International Organization 56:3:
regress y x if ylag==1
Pevehouse, Jon C With a Little Help from My Friends? Regional Organizations and the Consolidation of Democracy. American Journal of Political Science 46 (3):

13. How can regional organizations cause transitions to democracy?
Summary
Diplomatic & economic pressure
Acquiescence of anti-democracy elites
hands-tying
socialization (norms)

14. I. Diplomatic & Economic Pressure

15. (I) How do IO's provide diplomatic & economic pressure?
highly visible
multi-lateral legitimacy (not “unilateralism”)

16. Example: The OAS & Guatemala
Auto-golpe of Jorge Serrano in Guatemala (1993)
dissolved legislature, closed courts, ruled by decree
OAS – protested & proposed sanctions
5 days later, military ousted Serrano, installing civilian rule

17. March 30, 2017

18. II. Acquiescence of anti-democracy elites
hands-tying
socialization (norms)

19. Credible threat & income distribution (Ross 2001, Rosendorff 2001, Boix 2003, Jensen and Wantchekon 2004, Acemoglu & Robinson 2006)
Democracy an elite-question:
Costs of repression (autocracy)
vs. Costs of income redistribution (democracy)
Income distribution obviously matters (higher income inequality makes repression more attract)
Asset specificity –
oil can’t come with you (Middle East, Nigeria)
education can (India, South Africa)

20. “Sorry, Mandela, but we've got problems everywhere we look
“Sorry, Mandela, but we've got problems everywhere we look. Housing, food, jobs, crime, our currency. You can't keep interrupting affairs of state to placate a minority”
“I must. That minority still controls the police, the army, and the economy. If we lose them, we cannot address the other issues.”

21. (II) How do IO’s get elites to acquiesce?
Hands-tying
The problem to solve:
Business elites - fear expropriation under a populist leader
How regional organizations solve the problem:
Economic IO's may make credible the commitment to preserve property rights
Socialization
Military elites - fear subjugation & reprisals
Joint-training exercises bring officers of all countries together
Re-orient military officers away from politics (re-socialize)
Temptation to
 expropriate
Populist leader 
Regional organizations!

22. Why the focus on Regional IO's (not global)?
Small numbers & higher levels of interaction than global organizations
Causal processes are more likely in regional organizations
Socialization
Hands-tying
Monitoring
Enforcement

23. The measure (independent variable)
“democratic density” of a country's most democratic organization
“IOScore_it-1”: the score of the most- democratic IO of which state i is a member in the year t-1.
The “democraticness” of the IO is measured as the average democracy- score of all members (except state i).

24. Evidence

25. Here’s a finding that’s statistically significant in the first model, but NOT ROBUST across the other models.

26. More meaningful…

27. Policy
Suppose the president of a rich & powerful country wanted to make democracy-promotion a foreign policy goal…
Causing democracy to emerge may be beyond policy-makers hands.
Certainly promoting economic growth will not help.
But promoting development in poor democracies may help them survive.

28. TAKE HOME 1: How to read basic “regression” results (not on the exam )
What is it “explaining” (dependent variable, usually in the title of the table)?
What is the unit of analysis (how many observations… of what)?
What are the independent variables?
What is the effect of each independent (explanatory) variable? (Is the “coefficient” positive/negative?)
Are the effects statistically significant?
Is the standard error <1/2 the size of the coefficient?
OR: is the t-stat/z-stat >1.96?
OR: is the p-value<0.05?

29. Main take-homes Triangulating the democratic peace
THINKING DYNAMICALLY
Distinguish between “onset” and “duration”
ONSET: why something EMERGES
DURATION: why it SURVIVES
Hands-tying/commitment
Membership in regional IO’s that are highly democratic may help democracy to emerge

30. Thank you WE ARE GLOBAL GEORGETOWN!

31. How robust? There are many stories of democracy
Empirical implications  many variables that purportedly explain democracy
Little consensus – different projects use different specifications
We apply EBA – 59 proposed factors ( million regressions)
EBA is a high standard; variables that fail may matter
Some variables, however, do survive. We suggest that these variables may be the most important factors determining democracy.

32. Different stories of democracy:
Culturalist
Economic (emergence vs. survival)
Game theoretic: Credible promise/threat & income distribution
Regional Diffusion

33. Culturalist The Civic Culture (Almond & Verba 1963)
Cross-national evidence (Inglehart 1988)
Democracy associated with high levels of interpersonal TRUST
Seligson (2002) shows these correlations are spurious
They disappear when PER CAPITA INCOME is controlled for...

34. % of pop. saying “most people can be trusted.”
Democracy
% of pop. saying “most people can be trusted.”

35. % of pop. saying “most people can be trusted.”
$6,000
$5,000
$4,000
Democracy
$3,000
$2,000
$1,000
% of pop. saying “most people can be trusted.”

36. Modernization theory
Dates back to Lipset (1959) – Correlation between economic development & democracy
Common interpretation: Development  Democracy
But the DYNAMICS of regime transitions are ignored!
Przeworksi & Limongi (1997) – Modernization: Theories and Facts
Przeworski, Alvarez, Cheibub & Limongi (2000) – Democracy and Development
This study is concerned with economic growth – drops oil rich countries

37. Credible threat & income distribution (Ross 2001, Rosendorff 2001, Boix 2003, Jensen and Wantchekon 2004, Acemoglu & Robinson 2006)
Democracy an elite-question:
Costs of repression (autocracy)
vs. Costs of income redistribution (democracy)
Income distribution obviously matters (higher income inequality makes repression more attract)
Asset specificity –
oil can’t come with you (Middle East, Nigeria)
education can (India, South Africa)

38. “Sorry, Mandela, but we've got problems everywhere we look
“Sorry, Mandela, but we've got problems everywhere we look. Housing, food, jobs, crime, our currency. You can't keep interrupting affairs of state to placate a minority”
“I must. That minority still controls the police, the army, and the economy. If we lose them, we cannot address the other issues.”

39. Diffusion – an international story
All (international) politics is local (Gleditsch 2002)
Neighborhood effects
Pevehouse (2002) mechanism:
Regional international organizations

40. Data Przeworski et al. (2000) Democracy indicator:
“Democracy is a system in which incumbents lose elections.”
Chief executive, legislature face “contested” elections
Ex ante uncertainty, Ex post irreversibility, Repeatability
Explanatory variables: In total we employ 59 previously suggested in the literature
Central variable: GDP per capita (M vector)
Measured in purchasing power parity 1995 US$

41. Results
The most striking of our findings is that MOST of the variables suggested in the literature do NOT survive EBA.

42. Results – Emergence of Democracy Transition from Autocracy to Democracy (robust variables)
GDP/capita does not matter for emergence!
GDP growth does matter but negative!!
Past transitions (positive), OECD (positive), Muslim share (negative), Fuel exports (negative)

43. Final model – Do even these variables survive?
On the right we exclude the countries coded as oil exporters by Easterly and Sewadeh (2001)
Past transitions, OECD member, and GDP growth survive, but OECD marginal effect is not significant (the baseline probability of a democratic transition is only 2 percent)

44. Results – Survival of Democracy “Transition” from Democracy to Democracy (robust variables)
GDP/capita matters (positive)
Executive is a former military leader (negative)
Neighboring democracies (positive)
Past transitions (negative)

45. Final model – Do even these variables survive?
Military leader is co-linear with past transitions
GDP/capita, neighboring democracy, past transitions survive, but “neighbor” marginal effect is not significant (the baseline probability of a democratic survival is 98 percent)

46. Note on theory
Other variables may indeed matter in well-specified models.
But there is great disagreement on theory, and we choose not to take sides in this project.
Methodologically neutral approach gives stark results.
Few robust determinants of Democracy.
Policy-makers may care most about these…

47. Libya, Qaddaffi, & the Arab League?
Note that by Pevehouse’s measure, the Arab League gets a low score for the democracy of members

48. Honduras and Zelaya (2009)?