Political Institutions and Academic Freedom: Evidence from Across the World

Niclas Berggren and Christian Bjørnskov

No 1388, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: There is scant systematic empirical evidence on what explains variation in academic freedom. Making use of a new indicator and panel data covering 64 countries 1960–2017, we investigate how de facto academic freedom is affected by, in particular, political institutions. We find that moving to electoral democracy is positive, as is moving to electoral autocracy from other autocratic systems, suggesting the importance of elections. Communism has a strongly detrimental effect. Legislatures that are bicameral are associated with more academic freedom, while legislatures that become more diverse and more ideologically to the right also seem to stimulate this type of freedom. Presidentialism and coups do not appear to matter much, while more proportional electoral systems strengthen academic freedom. More judicial accountability stimulates academic freedom, and richer countries experience more of it. The results suggest that the political sphere exerts a clear but complex influence on the degree to which scholarly activities are free.

Keywords: Academic freedom; Politics; Democracy; Institutions; Ideology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 I23 K40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2021-05-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifn.se/wfiles/wp/wp1388.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Political institutions and academic freedom: evidence from across the world (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1388

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Box 55665, SE-102 15 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Elisabeth Gustafsson ().