Vanessa Alexandra Boese

University of Gothenburg | GU · Department of Political Science

This paper introduces a new approach to the quantitative study of democratization. Building on the comparative case-study and large-N literature, it outlines an episode approach that identifies the discrete beginning of a period of political liberalization, traces its progression, and classifies episodes as successful versus different types of fail...

This article analyses the state of democracy around the world in 2021. The level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen in 2021 was down to 1989 levels. In 2021, autocracies were on the rise, harbouring 70% of the world population, or 5.4 billion people. There was also a record number of countries autocratizing in 2021: 33 countries, ho...

We are pleased to present the Democracy Report 2022 from the V-Dem Institute. Our report comes during challenging times as the world is facing a war in Europe, rising tensions in the East Asia-Pacific region, a return of military and other coups, and new heights of polarization across many societies. It is our hope that the Democracy Report 2022 wi...

Populist parties and actors now govern various countries around the world. Often elected by the public in times of crises and over the perceived failure of ‘the elites’, the question stands as to how populist governments actually perform once elected, especially in times of crisis. Using the pandemic shock in the form of the COVID-19 crises, our pa...

When authoritarian regimes liberalize, are there observable patterns in the ordering of reforms, and are these patterns distinct for cases that transition to democracy? While the prevailing literature tends to focus on exogenous ‘determinants’ of democracy, this letter describes the endogenous dynamics of liberalization itself. Using pairwise domin...

Um die Demokratie ist es derzeit nicht gut bestellt. Wie Indikatoren des Varieties of Democracy-Projekts (V-Dem) zeigen, erleben wir weltweit eine Welle der Autokratisierung, von der bereits ein Drittel der Weltbevölkerung erfasst wurde. Vielerorts ist die Demokratie gefährdet.

This is a response to Luca Tomini's “Don't think of a wave!” and Svend-Erik Skaaning's “Waves of autocratization and democratization”. With this rejoinder we make three arguments: First, the question how global waves shape autocratization processes and regime transformations is now more urgent than ever. Since 1994, civil liberties and political ri...

This article introduces a novel conceptualization of democratic resilience - a two-stage process where democracies avoid democratic declines altogether or avert democratic breakdown given that such autocratization is ongoing. Drawing on the Episodes of Regime Transformation (ERT) dataset, we find that democracies have had a high level of resilience...

Populist parties and actors now govern various countries around the world. Often elected by the public in times of crises and over the perceived failure of ‘the elites’, the question stands as to how populist governments actually perform once elected, especially in times of crisis. Using the pandemic shock in the form of the COVID-19 crises, our pa...

This paper investigates conceptual ambiguities concerning the dimensionality of democracy and what it can tell us about political development. We explore variation in components of the Electoral Democracy Index from the Varieties of Democracy Project and evaluate the strength of their relationships to democratization and democratic stability. Facto...

Unidimensional measures of democracy fail to account for the complex and varied nature of political systems. This article disaggregates the concept of democracy and proposes a multidimensional conceptualization to account for this variation in institutional cofingurations. Three theoretically informed dimensions are featured: participation, elector...

While social scientists often theorize about the enduring effects of past regime characteristics, conceptual issues and data limitations pose real challenges for assessing these legacies empirically. This paper introduces a new measure of democratic stock, conceptualized as the accumulated experience of democratic rule within a polity. Using a weig...

Democracy is under threat globally from democratically elected leaders engaging in erosion of media freedom, civil society, and the rule of law. What distinguishes democracies that prevail against the forces of autocratization? This article breaks new ground by conceptualizing democratic resilience as a two-stage process, whereby democracies first...

The current return to protectionist measures coinciding with a rise of illiberalism triggers the need for a more detailed understanding of the interactions of economic and political dimensions. This thesis consists of four articles advancing our understanding of the complex interactions between trade, democracy, development and conflict. The first...

Measures of democracy are regularly employed in the statistical analysis of economic, political, and social policy. This paper reviews the measures" setup, strength, and weaknesses across the three most prominent democracy datasets: PolityIV, Freedom House, and Varieties of Democracy. The measures developed by the Varieties of Democracy project out...

The empirical analysis of datasets covering a large number of countries and time periods has become an integral part of peace economics. Numerous studies examine the relationships between macroeconomic or political factors and conflict. Carrying out such a study often involves merging several existing datasets to combine relevant variables. However...

There is a vast amount of studies on the origins of revolutions and armed conflict. However, there is no empirical analysis of the political outcome of revolutionary conflicts. A second branch of research focuses on waves of democratization. This paper fills the gap and links the two fields by examining the importance of revolutions as an explanato...