The Lexical Index of Democracy described in Skaaning, Svend-Erik; John Gerring;
and Henrikas Bartusevicius (2015). "A Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy."
Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 48, No. 12, pp. 1491-1525. Original data
and variable descriptions available at
https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/29106.
lied
An object of class tbl_df (inherits from tbl, data.frame) with 18529 rows and 24 columns.
Variable descriptions
- country_name
- Standardized country name. This is the same
across all datasets in this package, so you can always join them by
country_name and year. Character with 223 distinct values. Most common:
Afghanistan (216), China (216), Iran (Persia) (216), Nepal (216), Oman (216),
Portugal (216), Russia (Soviet Union) (216), Spain (216), Sweden (216),
Thailand (216), Turkey (Ottoman Empire) (216), United Kingdom (216), United
States of America (216). NAs = 0.
- year
- Year. Numeric. Max = 2015, min = 1800, distinct = 216, mean =
1938.909, sd = 61.632, NAs = 0.
- GWn
- Gleditsch-Ward numeric country code. See Gleditsch and Ward (1999).
Numeric. Max = 990, min = 2, distinct = 223, mean = 411.658, sd = 259.849, NAs
= 0.
- male_suffrage
- Virtually all male citizens are allowed to vote in
national elections. Legal restrictions pertaining to age, criminal conviction,
incompetence, and local residency are not considered. Informal restrictions
such as those obtaining in the American South prior to 1965 are also not
considered. Numeric. Max = 1, min = 0, distinct = 2, mean = 0.632, sd = 0.482,
NAs = 0.
- female_suffrage
- Virtually all female citizens are allowed to vote in
national elections. Similar coding rules apply. Numeric. Max = 1, min = 0,
distinct = 2, mean = 0.537, sd = 0.499, NAs = 0.
- exselec
- The chief executive is either directly or indirectly elected
(i.e., chosen by people who have been elected) Numeric. Max = 1, min = 0,
distinct = 2, mean = 0.641, sd = 0.48, NAs = 0.
- legselec
- A legislative body issues at least some laws and does not
perform executive functions. The lower house (or unicameral chamber) of the
legislature is at least partly elected. The legislature has not been closed.
Numeric. Max = 1, min = 0, distinct = 2, mean = 0.741, sd = 0.438, NAs = 0.
- opposition
- The lower house (or unicameral chamber) of the legislature is
(at least in part) elected by voters facing more than one choice. Specifically,
parties are not banned and (a) more than one party is allowed to compete or (b)
elections are nonpartisan (i.e., all candidates run without party labels)
Numeric. Max = 1, min = 0, distinct = 2, mean = 0.594, sd = 0.491, NAs = 0.
- competition
- The chief executive offices and seats in the effective
legislative body are filled by elections characterized by uncertainty (see
Przeworski 2000: 16- 17), meaning that the elections are, in principle,
sufficiently free to enable the opposition to gain power if they were to
attract sufficient support from the electorate. This presumes that control over
key executive and legislative offices is determined by elections, the executive
and members of the legislature have not been unconstitutionally removed, and
the legislature has not been dissolved. With respect to the electoral process,
this presumes that the constitutional timing of elections has not been violated
(in a more than marginal fashion), non-extremist parties are not banned,
opposition candidates are generally free to participate, voters experience
little systematic coercion in exercising their electoral choice, and electoral
fraud does not determine who wins. With respect to the outcome, this presumes
that the declared winner of executive and legislative elections reflects the
votes cast by the electorate, as near as can be determined from extant sources.
Incumbent turnover (as a result of multi-party elections) is regarded as a
strong indicator of competition, but is neither necessary nor sufficient. In
addition, we rely on reports from outside observers (as reported in books,
articles, and country reports) about whether the foregoing conditions have been
met in a given election (see Svolik 2012: 24). Coding for this variable does
not take into account whether there is a level playing field, whether all
contestants gain access to funding and media, whether media coverage is
unbiased, whether civil liberties are respected, or other features associated
with fully free and fair elections. COMPETITION thus sets a modest threshold.
Numeric. Max = 1, min = 0, distinct = 2, mean = 0.349, sd = 0.477, NAs = 0.
- lexical_index
- To generate the lexical index from these six binary
variables, a country-year is assigned the highest score (L0-6) for which it
fulfills all requisite criteria, as follows:
L0: LEGSELEC=0 & EXSELEC=0.
L1: LEGSELEC=1 or EXSELEC=1.
L2: LEGSELEC=1 & OPPOSITION=1.
L3: LEGSELEC=1 & OPPOSITION=1 & EXSELEC=1.
L4: LEGSELEC=1 & OPPOSITION=1 & EXSELEC=1 & COMPETITION=1.
L5: LEGSELEC=1 & OPPOSITION=1 & EXSELEC=1 & COMPETITION=1 & (MALE SUFFRAGE=1 or
FEMALE SUFFRAGE=1).
L6: LEGSELEC=1 & OPPOSITION=1 & EXSELEC=1 & COMPETITION=1 & MALE SUFFRAGE=1 &
FEMALE SUFFRAGE=1. Numeric. Max = 6, min = 0, distinct = 7, mean = 2.783, sd =
2.346, NAs = 0.
- regime
- A character version of lexical_index. Coded as follows:
0 = nonelectoral,
1 = one- or no- party elections,
2 = limited competition multiparty elections for legislature only,
3 = Limited competition multiparty elections for both executive and legislature (with or without universal suffrage),
4 = Competitive elections for executive and legislative, limited suffrage,
5 = Male democracy,
6 = Electoral democracy. Character with 7 distinct values. Most common: Electoral democracy (5106), Limited competition multiparty electi... (4546), Nonelectoral (4504). NAs = 0.
- lied_country
- Country name in the original dataset. Character with 229
distinct values. Most common: Afghanistan (216), China (216), Iran (216), Nepal
(216), Oman (216), Portugal (216), Spain (216), Sweden (216), Thailand (216),
United Kingdom (216), United States (216). NAs = 0.
- GWc
- Gleditsch-Ward alphabetic country code. See Gleditsch and Ward
(1999). Character with 223 distinct values. Most common: AFG (216), CHN (216),
IRN (216), NEP (216), OMA (216), POR (216), RUS (216), SPN (216), SWD (216),
THI (216), TUR (216), UKG (216), USA (216). NAs = 0.
- cown
- Correlates of War numeric country code. Differs from GWn for a few
country-years. See Gleditsch and Ward (1999). Numeric. Max = 990, min = 2,
distinct = 222, mean = 411.524, sd = 259.55, NAs = 0.
- polity_ccode
- Country code in Polity datasets. Differs from GWn for a few
country-years. See Gleditsch and Ward (1999). Numeric. Max = 990, min = 2,
distinct = 230, mean = 411.502, sd = 259.536, NAs = 0.
- region
- Region. Character with 23 distinct values. Most common: South
America (2019), Southern Europe (1554), Western Europe (1829). NAs = 0.
- continent
- Continent. Character with 5 distinct values. Most common:
Americas (4514), Asia (4299), Europe (5527). NAs = 0.
- GW_startdate
- Date at which the state entered the system of states
according to Gleditsch and Ward, or NA if it has never been a member. Date. Max
= 2011-07-09, min = 1816-01-01, distinct = 170, NAs = 0.
- GW_enddate
- Date at which the state ceased to be a member of the system
of states according to Gleditsch and Ward, or NA if it still exists. Date. Max
= 2006-06-04, min = 1830-07-05, distinct = 30, NAs = 16116.
- microstate
- Indicator of whether the state is a microstate, according to
Gleditsch's list of microstates. Logical. TRUE = 739, FALSE = 17790, NAs = 0.
- lat
- Latitude. Numeric. Max = 64.963, min = -40.901, distinct = 219, mean
= 21.631, sd = 25.355, NAs = 0.
- lon
- Longitude. Numeric. Max = 178.68, min = -175.198, distinct = 219,
mean = 8.491, sd = 67.904, NAs = 0.
- in_cow
- Whether the country-year is in the Correlates of War system of
states. Logical. TRUE = 16277, FALSE = 2252, NAs = 0.
- in_system
- Whether the country-year is in the Gleditsch-Ward system of
states. See Gleditsch and Ward (1999). Logical. TRUE = 17993, FALSE = 536, NAs
= 0.
References
Gleditsch, Kristian S. & Michael D. Ward. 1999. "Interstate System Membership:
A Revised List of the Independent States since 1816." International
Interactions 25: 393-413. The list can be found at
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~ksg/statelist.html
Skaaning, Svend-Erik; John Gerring; and Henrikas Bartusevicius (2015). "A
Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy." Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 48,
No. 12, pp. 1491-1525.
See also
Other democracy: all_gwf_extended_yearly,
democracy, extended_uds,
kailitz_yearly, magaloni,
polity_annual, vdem,
wahman_teorell
Other institutions: PIPE,
democracy_mentions_yearly,
svolik_institutions
Other regime characteristics: PIPE,
all_gwf_extended_yearly,
all_gwf_periods, all_gwf,
kailitz_yearly,
magaloni_extended, magaloni,
polity_annual,
svolik_institutions,
wahman_teorell