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Begin New Search Topic Democracy Author Svend-Erik Skaaning

1. The Real Lessons of the Interwar Years

Author:
Jorgen Moller, Svend-Erik Skaaning, and Agnes Cornell
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
Several observers have recently invoked interwar political developments to make the case that even established democracies are fragile and vulnerable to breakdown. However, the real lesson of the interwar period is that even crises as devastating as the Great Depression and the political success of totalitarian movements did little to undermine the stability of established democratic systems. Only in new and fragile democracies did the economic, political, and social dislocations of the 1920s and 1930s tear apart the democratic fabric. Although long established democracies in Western Europe and North America may today be facing a perilous situation, the interwar experience does not lend support to the argument that they are fragile. ​
Topic:
Democracy, Fragile States, Totalitarianism, and Great Depression
Political Geography:
Europe, North America, and Western Europe

2. Democracy, Democratization, and Civil War

Author:
Suthan Krishnarajan, Jørgen Møller, Lasse Lykke Rørbæk, and Svend-Erik Skaaning
Publication Date:
08-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem)
Abstract:
An influential body of scholarship has associated both democracy and democratization with civil war. Important findings include the so-called inverted U-shaped relationship between democracy-levels and civil war onset and that propensity for democratic openings to spark internal violence. However, most of these findings have been challenged, particularly by scholars pointing to problems with the aggregate nature of the analyses and the data sources used. Against this background, we enlist new, fine-grained data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. We discuss how the new data can be used to disaggregate regime variables in order to better understand the causal dynamics that link the regime form and regime change to civil war onset, if any. Guided by these considerations, we use the new data to reassess the ‘inverted U-curve’. Our analysis shows that this relationship is driven by ‘liberal’ aspects of democracy such as freedom of assembly and freedom of speech rather than by the ‘electoral core’ of democracy. The relationship between clean elections and civil war onset is approximately linearly decreasing, and at the indicator level of the clean elections attribute we find several different patterns.
Topic:
Civil War, Democratization, and Democracy
Political Geography:
Global Focus