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Endogenous democracy: causal evidence from the potato productivity shock in the old world

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2020

Joan Barceló Open the ORCID record for Joan Barceló [Opens in a new window]  and
Guillermo Rosas Open the ORCID record for Guillermo Rosas [Opens in a new window]
Joan Barceló*
Affiliation:
Political Science, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Guillermo Rosas
Affiliation:
Political Science, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
*
*Corresponding author. joan.barcelo@nyu.edu
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Abstract

Despite a high cross-country correlation between development and democracy, it is difficult to gauge the impact of economic development on the probability that autocracies will transition to democracy because of endogeneity, especially due to reverse causation and omitted variable bias. Hence, whether development causes democracy remains a contested issue. We exploit exogeneity in the regional variation of potato cultivation along with the timing of the introduction of potatoes to the Old World (i.e., a potato productivity shock) to identify a causal effect of urbanization, a proxy for economic development, on democratization. Our results, which hold under sensitivity analyses that question the validity of the exclusion restriction, present new evidence of the existence of a causal effect of economic development on democracy.

Keywords

Comparative political economycomparative politicspolitical institutions
Type
Research Note
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 650 - 657
Copyright
Copyright © The European Political Science Association 2020

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Supplementary material: Link

Barceló and Rosas Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OZEQ77
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Barceló and Rosas supplementary material

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