Chains in episodes of democratization

Abstract

How do democratic institutions develop during episodes of liberalization in autocracies? Existing research has theorized about the long process of institutional change that makes up regime transitions, but existing quantitative methods are not equipped to analyze these multi-stage patterns of development across many variables. In this research note, we introduce a new methodology, Analysis of Chains (AOC), that allows for such analysis. Unlike previous methodologies, AOC identifies long patterns of simultaneous changes across numerous dichotomous, ordinal, and/or continuous variables. To demonstrate the utility of this method, we use AOC to catalog chains of institutional development across 47 indicators of democracy in 377 episodes of liberalization from 1900 to 2021. In addition to generating a descriptive account of the multi-step processes of regime change in each of these episodes, this innovative approach yields two general findings for transitology research. First, the results show that institutions related to elections and freedom of association are the most common elements of democracy to develop earlier during democratization episodes. Second, there is limited correlation between the order of institutional development and successful transition to democracy. Overall, the research note makes critical methodological and empirical contributions to research on democratic transitions.