Suport Vector Machine Democracy Index by Grundler and Krieger

Source: R/data_documentation.R

This is the index described in K. Gründler and T. Krieger. Machine Learning Indices, Political Institutions, and Economic Development. Report. CESifo Group Munich, 2018. https://www.cesifo-group.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp6930.pdf. An earlier version of this index (used in K. Gründler and T. Krieger. "Democracy and growth: Evidence from a machine learning indicator". In: European Journal of Political Economy 45 (2016), pp. 85-107. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2016.05.005. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268016300222.) is available as svmdi_2016; there are some important differences between the values of the earlier and later versions of the index.

svmdi

svmdi_2016

Format

An object of class tbl_df (inherits from tbl, data.frame) with 12588 rows and 9 columns.

An object of class tbl_df (inherits from tbl, data.frame) with 5376 rows and 13 columns.

Source

K. Gründler and T. Krieger. "Democracy and growth: Evidence from a machine learning indicator". In: European Journal of Political Economy 45 (2016), pp. 85-107. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2016.05.005. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268016300222.

K. Gründler and T. Krieger. "Democracy and growth: Evidence from a machine learning indicator". In: European Journal of Political Economy 45 (2016), pp. 85-107. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2016.05.005. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268016300222.

Variables

svmdi_country

The country name, as in the original dataset, with minimal modification. Use extended_country_name instead if you want a consistent name.

svmdi_iso

Three letter ISO country code. In the original dataset.

year

The calendar year.

region1

Geographical region. (In the 2016 release only).

region2

Geographical region. (In the 2016 release only).

csvmdi

Continuous version of the support vector machine democracy index (In the 2020 release only). Ranges from 0 = least demcratic to 1 = most democratic.

dsvmdi

Discrete version of the support vector machine democracy index (In the 2020 release only). 0 = Not demcratic, 1 = democratic.

svmdi

Continuous version of the support vector machine democracy index (In the 2016 release only). Ranges from 0 = least demcratic to 1 = most democratic.

svmdi_sd

Standard deviation of the continuous version of the support vector machine democracy index (In the 2016 release only).

svmdi_q5

Lower confidence bound of the continuous version of the support vector machine democracy index (In the 2016 release only).

svmdi_q95

Upper confidence bound of the continuous version of the support vector machine democracy index (In the 2016 release only).

Standard descriptive variables (generated by this package)

extended_country_name

The name of the country in the Gleditsch-Ward system of states, or the official name of the entity (for non-sovereign entities and states not in the Gleditsch and Ward system of states) or else a common name for disputed cases that do not have an official name (e.g., Western Sahara, Hyderabad). The Gleditsch and Ward scheme sometimes indicates the common name of the country and (in parentheses) the name of an earlier incarnation of the state: thus, they have Germany (Prussia), Russia (Soviet Union), Madagascar (Malagasy), etc. For details, see 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.

GWn

Gleditsch and Ward's numeric country code, from the Gleditsch and Ward list of independent states.

cown

The Correlates of War numeric country code, 2016 version. This differs from Gleditsch and Ward's numeric country code in a few cases. See http://www.correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/state-system-membership for the full list.

in_GW_system

Whether the state is "in system" (that is, is independent and sovereign), according to Gleditsch and Ward, for this particular date. Matches at the end of the year; so, for example South Vietnam 1975 is FALSE because, according to Gleditsch and Ward, the country ended on April 1975 (being absorbed by North Vietnam). It is also TRUE for dates beyond 2012 for countries that did not end by then, depsite the fact that the Gleditsch and Ward list has not been updated since.