We investigate whether mining affects local-level corruption in Africa. Several cross-country analyses report that natural resource production and wealth have adverse effects on political institutions, for instance by increasing corruption, whereas other country-level studies show no evidence of...

In this paper, we investigate whether and how election campaigns matter for party choice. We discuss how systematic changes in voting behavior may stem from the interaction between specific distributions of voter preferences along multiple policy-dimensions and cues generated by campaigns...

At least since Lipset, the notion that democracy thrives (only) in countries where liberal or freedom-oriented values are widespread has been highly popular among political scientists and sociologists. The perhaps most eloquent argument for such a relationship has been proposed by Ronald...

With Version 6, we are releasing new data for 113 countries covering 2013 and 2014, and for 76 of these countries data is also available for 2015 – in addition to the full data for all 173 countries from 1900-2012. The dataset now includes about 350 unique and disaggregated democracy...

Most studies of democratic developments are limited to the period after World War II. However, political regimes varied according to different aspects of democracy long before the establishment of modern liberal mass democracies. We come down strongly in favor of collecting disaggregate and...