This paper addresses three interrelated questions. First, how strong is the evidence that democracy has declined globally over the last decade? Second, how should we best measure (change in) democracy? Third, given that much of the recent evidencefor global backsliding comes from measurement...

This study argues that strong parties play a critical role in fostering economic development. The theory explores how parties broaden the constituencies to which policy makers respond and help politicians to solve coordination problems. These features ensure that politicians engage in better...

Social scientists face the challenge of determining whether their data are valid, yet they lack practical guidance about how to do so. Existing publications on data validation provide mostly abstract information for creating one’s own dataset or establishing that an existing one is adequate....