Rain and the democratic window of opportunity

Markus Brückner and Antonio Ciccone

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: According to the economic approach to political transitions, transitory negative economic shocks can open a window of opportunity for democratic improvement. Testing the theory requires a source of transitory shocks to the aggregate economy. We use rainfall shocks in Sub-Saharan African countries and find that negative rainfall shocks are followed by significant improvement in democratic institutions. Instrumental variables estimates indicate that following a transitory negative income shock of 1 percent, democracy scores improve by 0.9 percentage points and the probability of a democratic transition increases by 1.3 percentage points.

Keywords: Democratization; transitory economic shocks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O0 P0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-10, Revised 2009-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity (2011)
Working Paper: Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity (2010)
Working Paper: Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity (2010)
Working Paper: Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity (2009)
Working Paper: Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity (2008)
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