Collaborative Research: Institution, Development, and Democracy

人们通常认为，当尺子受到法律约束时，当它们对广大选民负责时，当个人安全和财产权得到保证时，当有能力的官僚机构对民选官员做出回应时，好事就会随之而来。但我们怎么知道这是真的呢？我们如何才能知道这些制度特征可能会产生什么样的有利结果？由于缺乏民主和治理的细粒度措施，这些主题的工作一直受到限制。该项目通过建立一个新的数据库--民主多样性数据库(V-DEM)来解决这一问题，该数据库在1900年至2012年期间对世界上所有较大的国家进行高度分类，衡量民主和治理的各个方面--包括选举竞争、法治、公民自由、包容、权力下放和立法优先地位。有了这个庞大的数据库，研究人员将测试这些机构与过去一个世纪的经济增长、基础设施、卫生和教育等成果之间的关系。该项目的好处包括增进目前对政治机构对发展成果的影响的了解。这应该有利于政府、国际组织和非政府组织，这些政府、国际组织和非政府组织旨在通过就往往奏效、适得其反或没有效果的各种机构干预提供指导，从而促进世界各地的经济和社会发展。此外，数据还将提供给发展机构、政策制定者和学者。所有数据都将在项目网站(v-dem.net)上以各种互动界面免费提供。这是一个大数据项目。然而，与许多大数据项目不同，它是以理论为指导的。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，将使用其他技术来审查小组数据，如格兰杰因果关系等。然后，该项目将允许检验政治学中关于体制、民主和发展之间相互作用的一些现行理论。

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.