Carl Henrik Knutsen and DEMOCRACY
DEMOCRACY and DICTATORSHIP
Carl Henrik Knutsen
DEMOCRACY and DICTATORSHIP
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First Edition 2024 / Printing 1 2024
ISBN: 978-82-450-5167-4
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Foreword
This is the English translation of Demokrati og diktatur, originally written in Norwegian and published on Fagbokforlaget in 2021. Except for the language, I have only done minor corrections and changes to this English-language version. These minor changes include updating particular numbers (e.g., average scores on democracy indices) and figures with the most recently available data. Yet, I have not made any major adjustments to the structure or added newer, longer discussions of recent scholarly literature, unless such an update is clearly required. Hence, the two versions can be regarded as substitutes, for example if it is to be used in classes with both Norwegian- and English-speaking students. The following text in this Foreword also resembles that of the Norwegian version written a few years ago:
Authors often write in the preface that the process of writing the book has been long and arduous. The process of writing this book cannot be characterised in such a manner – on the contrary, the writing process was great fun and went relatively quickly. That being said, it has taken some time. Many thanks to my family – Angélique, Carl Frederik and Caroline – who have put up with me sneaking away in the evenings or on Sunday mornings to write about democracies and dictatorships. I would also like to thank Fagbokforlaget, and especially my editor, May Helene Solberg, for believing in and helping to inspire this project. May Helene has been very important both as a motivator and advisor in this process, and she has provided very thorough comments and many concrete suggestions for improvements throughout the text. She deserves a lot of credit for this book project being realised and for the quality of the final product. Special thanks go to Sirianne Dahlum, Bjørn Erik Rasch and Tore Wig for carefully reading the first draft of the book and providing extensive and very good feedback. The manuscript became much better after incorporating these comments and suggestions. Many thanks also to Harald Eia for comments and input.
The time that I spent studying the different phenomena that I write about on the following pages is of course much longer than the time it took to write
the book, as such, although it would still be wrong to call this lengthy process arduous. I have been fortunate enough to research and publish about many of the exciting topics and questions raised in this book’s various chapters, which is reflected in the many references to studies in which I have participated. Of course, the high number of self-references could be interpreted as a sign of a slightly over-inflated self-image; there might be something to that interpretation. A kinder interpretation is that this book represents research-based communication and that I have chosen to focus on topics and studies with which I am closely familiar.
The topic addressed in Chapter 6 – the economic consequences of democracy and dictatorship – is the one I have had the longest relationship with and the one that I have worked with the most. My bachelor’s thesis in political science (2004) and my master’s theses in political science (2006) and economics (2007) dealt with this topic. The same applies to my Ph.D. thesis in political science from 2011 and several research articles that I have written alone or with great colleagues. I have also long been passionate about the questions of how democracy and dictatorship should be defined and measured. The measurement of particular democracy concepts was the subject of my very first research article from 2010, and these topics are at the core of my work on the Varieties of Democracy project (V-Dem), which I write about in Chapters 2 and 3. Moreover, I have worked extensively on various causes of regime change and regime stability in both democracies and dictatorships, with different collaborators. Many of these articles form the basis for various discussions in this book. I often refer to and briefly describe findings from regression analyses and other statistical analyses from these and other empirical articles, which allow me to avoid including this type of systematic analysis in the book. Interested readers are advised to look up the references and immerse themselves in these studies, which provide empirical evidence for the claims made here.
As a researcher I have learned an enormous amount from supervisors, students, research assistants, good colleagues and, not least, co-authors. It is appropriate to thank you all for your indirect – but no less important – contributions to this book. They are too many to list in this foreword. However, some should be emphasised; this book could not have been written without their important contributions to co-authored studies, data collection and many fruitful conversations about how democracies and dictatorships work. In particular, I would
like to thank my fantastic colleagues at the University of Oslo, PRIO and other institutions who have co-authored one or more of the articles that I have drawn heavily on in various chapters of this book: Sirianne Dahlum, Vilde Lunnan
Djuve, Haakon Gjerløw, Håvard Hegre, Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, Magnus Bergli Rasmussen, Espen Geelmuyden Rød, Simone Wegmann and Tore Wig. You have all been great to work with!
I would also like to thank the large international team behind V-Dem for their hard work and great cooperation in collecting so much data and for coauthoring several studies that I have drawn on in this book. This group is too large to list, but I want to emphasise the other “V-Dem PIs” (current and former)
–Michael Coppedge, John Gerring, Staffan Lindberg, Svend-Erik Skaaning and Jan Teorell. I have learnt a lot from all of you!
Finally, I’d like to thank my family for the great time we spend together and for listening to and discussing democracy research with me. This book would not have been written without you, especially not without Angélique, to whom this book is dedicated.
Oslo, April 22, 2024
Carl Henrik Knutsen
Innhold
Chapter 1
1.1 Mathieu Kérékou and Louis Napoleon –dictators and democratically elected leaders
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5 Maximalist
1.6
Chapter 2
2.3
2.4
2.5
Chapter 3
3.1
Chapter
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4
6.4 Bad
8.4
8.5
What is democracy, and how do we measure it? What defines a high-quality democracy, and what factors increase the risk of countries sliding into dictatorship? How does democracy impact economic development, inequality, and education policy?
The study of democracy, democratisation, and autocratic politics is central to comparative politics and other subfields of political science, such as international relations and public administration, as well as to disciplines like economics, sociology, and history.
This comprehensive book provides an introduction to the study of democracy and autocracy. It includes chapters on defining and measuring democracy, the historical development of democracy, the causes of regime stability and change, and the developmental and other effects of democracy and autocracy. The book offers an up-to-date exploration of the important questions engaging democracy researchers.
Aimed at a broad audience, including bachelor students in introductory comparative politics courses, this book offers an accessible and current overview of what research reveals about democracy and autocracy, their causes, and their consequences.
Carl Henrik Knutsen (b. 1981) is Professor and Research Group Leader at the University of Oslo and a Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Knutsen is co-PI and Steering Committee Chair of Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) and leads several research projects, including an ERC Consolidator Grant on autocratic politics. His work focuses on measuring democracy and dictatorship, the causes of democratisation and regime change, policy-making in dictatorships, and the economic consequences of democracy.
ISBN 978-82-450-5167-4