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Economic Shocks and Democratization in Africa*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 November 2013

Manuel Barron ,
Edward Miguel  and
Shanker Satyanath
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Abstract

The literature on the determinants of democratization has long been dominated by a view that claimed a central role for economic development (‘modernization’). Acemoglu et al. (2008, 2009) have recently challenged the robustness of empirical support for the modernization hypothesis. As an alternative, they claim that democratization is likely to occur in moments of economic crisis. Brückner and Ciccone (2011) appear to offer strong support for this latter view, and claim that lagged adverse GDP shocks generated by poor rainfall generate ‘windows of opportunity’ for democratization in contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa. The current article presents evidence that Brückner and Ciccone's provocative finding does not survive several sensible robustness checks, calling into question whether their claim in fact offers new insights into the process of democratization.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , April 2014 , pp. 33 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © The European Political Science Association 2013 

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Footnotes

*Manuel Barron is PhD candidate, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, Berkeley, 207 Giannini Hall #3310, Berkeley, CA 94720 (manuel.barron@berkeley.edu). Edward Miguel is Professor, Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley and Research Associate, NBER, 530 Evans Hall #3880 Berkeley, CA 94720 (emiguel@econ.berkeley.edu). Shanker Satyanath is Associate Professor, Department of Politics, New York University, 19 West Fourth Street, New York, NY 10012 (ss284@nyu.edu). We thank Michael Aklin and Thomas Zeitzoff for excellent research assistance, and Marshall Burke for sharing precipitation data. All errors remain our own.

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