TY - JOUR
T1 - Improving Models of Democracy: The Example of Lagged Effects of Economic Development, Education, and Gender Equality
AU - Balaev, Mikhail
PY - 2014/7
Y1 - 2014/7
N2 - The author examines how time delayed effects of economic development, education, and gender equality influence political democracy. Literature review shows inadequate understanding of lagged effects, which raises methodological and theoretical issues with the current quantitative studies of democracy. Using country-years as a unit of analysis, the author estimates a series of OLS PCSE models for each predictor with a systematic analysis of the distributions of the lagged effects. The second set of multiple OLS PCSE regressions are estimated including all three independent variables. The results show that economic development, education, and gender have three unique trajectories of the time-delayed effects: Economic development has long-term effects, education produces continuous effects regardless of the timing, and gender equality has the most prominent immediate and short term effects. The results call for the reassessment of model specifications and theoretical setups in the quantitative studies of democracy.
AB - The author examines how time delayed effects of economic development, education, and gender equality influence political democracy. Literature review shows inadequate understanding of lagged effects, which raises methodological and theoretical issues with the current quantitative studies of democracy. Using country-years as a unit of analysis, the author estimates a series of OLS PCSE models for each predictor with a systematic analysis of the distributions of the lagged effects. The second set of multiple OLS PCSE regressions are estimated including all three independent variables. The results show that economic development, education, and gender have three unique trajectories of the time-delayed effects: Economic development has long-term effects, education produces continuous effects regardless of the timing, and gender equality has the most prominent immediate and short term effects. The results call for the reassessment of model specifications and theoretical setups in the quantitative studies of democracy.
KW - Democracy
KW - Economic development
KW - Education
KW - Gender
KW - Lagged effects
KW - Statistical models
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84898758587&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2014.03.004
DO - 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2014.03.004
M3 - Article
VL - 46
SP - 169
EP - 183
JO - SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH
JF - SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH
SN - 0049-089X
ER -