Collaborative Research: Institution, Development, and Democracy

合作研究：制度、发展与民主

• 批准号: 1423928
• 负责人: John Gerring
• 金额: $ 9.98万
• 依托单位: Trustees of Boston University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-15 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1423928&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Institution; Development; Democracy

It is generally presumed that when rulers are constrained by law, when they are accountable to broad electorates, when personal security and property rights are assured, adn when capable bureaucracies are responsive to elected officials, good things will follow. But how do we know this is true? And how might we know which sorts of favorable outcomes of these institutional features is likely to foster? Work on these topics has been constrained by the absence of fine-grained measure of democracy and governance. This project addresses the problem by enlisting a new database, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), that measures various aspects of democarcy and governance-including electoral contestation, rule of law, civil liberty, inclusion, decentralization, and legislative primacy-at a highly disaggregated level for all sizable countries in the world from 1900 to 2012. With this immense database at its disposal, the researchers will test the relationship between these institutions and outcomes such as economic growth, infrastructure, health, and education over the past century. The benefits of the project include enhancing current understandings of the impact of political institutions on development outcomes. This should benefit governments, international organizations, and NGOs that aim to promote economic and social development around the world by providing guidance about the kinds of institutional interventions that tend to work, backfire, or have no effect. Also, the data will be provided to development agencies, policy-makers, and scholars. All the data will be freely available in a variety of interactive infterfaces on the project web site (v-dem.net). This is a BIG DATA project. However, unlike many big data projects, it is guided by theory. It will use innovative Bayesian techniques as well as case studies to help examine the causal mechanisms that are behind the relationships that are found by the analysis. Where appropriate other techniques will be used to examine the panel data such as Granger causalit, etc. This project will then allow for the testing of a number of current theories in political science about the interaction between institutions, democracy and development.

人们普遍认为，当统治者受到法律的约束，当他们对广大选民负责，当个人安全和财产权利得到保障，当有能力的官僚机构对民选官员作出反应时，好事就会随之而来。但我们怎么知道这是真的呢？我们如何知道这些制度特征可能会产生哪些有利的结果？由于缺乏对民主和治理的细致衡量，有关这些主题的工作受到了限制。该项目采用了一个名为“民主多样性”（V-Dem）的新数据库来解决这一问题，该数据库以高度分类的方式衡量了1900年至2012年世界上所有大国的民主和治理的各个方面，包括选举竞争、法治、公民自由、包容、权力下放和立法至上。有了这个庞大的数据库，研究人员将测试这些制度与过去一个世纪的经济增长、基础设施、健康和教育等结果之间的关系。该项目的好处包括加强目前对政治制度对发展成果影响的理解。这应该有利于旨在促进世界各地经济和社会发展的政府、国际组织和非政府组织，因为它们可以提供关于哪些制度干预会起作用、适得其反或没有效果的指导。此外，这些数据将提供给发展机构、决策者和学者。所有数据将在项目网站（v-dem.net）的各种交互界面上免费提供。这是一个大数据项目。然而，与许多大数据项目不同，它是由理论指导的。它将使用创新的贝叶斯技术以及案例研究来帮助检查分析中发现的关系背后的因果机制。在适当的情况下，将使用其他技术来检查面板数据，如格兰杰因果关系等。然后，这个项目将允许测试政治学中关于制度、民主和发展之间相互作用的一些当前理论。