Collaborative Research: Institution, Development, and Democracy

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证，当有能力的官僚机构对当选官员做出反应时，好事就会随之而来。 但我们怎么知道这是真的呢？ 我们又如何知道这些制度特征可能促成哪些有利的结果呢？ 由于缺乏对民主和治理的细致衡量，有关这些专题的工作受到限制。 该项目通过招募一个新的数据库来解决这个问题，民主的品种（V-Dem），该数据库测量民主和治理的各个方面，包括选举权，法治，公民自由，包容性，权力下放和立法首要性，在1900年至2012年世界上所有相当大的国家的高度分类水平。 有了这个庞大的数据库，研究人员将测试这些机构与过去世纪的经济增长、基础设施、健康和教育等成果之间的关系。 该项目的好处包括加强目前对政治体制对发展成果的影响的理解。 这应该有利于政府、国际组织和非政府组织，这些组织旨在通过提供关于哪些制度干预可能有效、适得其反或无效的指导，促进世界各地的经济和社会发展。 此外，这些数据将提供给发展机构、政策制定者和学者。 所有数据都将以各种交互式界面在项目网站（v-dem.net）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，以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，将使用其他技术来检查面板数据，如格兰杰因果关系等。该项目将允许测试一些当前的政治学理论之间的相互作用的制度，民主和发展。

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.