Ongoing projects
ELDAR
Key information
Project name: The Emergence, Life, and Demise of Autocratic Regimes
Duration: 2020-2025
Funding: ERC Consolidator Grant (2 million Euro)
PI: Carl Henrik Knutsen
Participating researchers: Sirianne Dahlum, Vilde Lunnan Djuve, John Gerring, Haakon Gjerløw; Magnus B. Rasmussen, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Tore Wig, Phd Fellow, Postdoc 1, Postdoc 2, Postdoc 3
Host institution: University of Oslo
Participating institutions: PRIO, University of Gothenburg (V-Dem Institute)
Link to project page
Link to project application
PROJECT ABSTRACT
ELDAR will investigate three aspects of autocratic politics: 1) the emergence of autocratic regimes; 2) policy-making (“life”) in autocracies in the areas of education, infrastructure, pensions and media regulation; 3) autocratic regime breakdown. ELDAR offers a comprehensive perspective, highlighting the interconnections between these three aspects – for example, the particular policies chosen may mitigate or exacerbate specific risks to the regime – and studying them jointly in one framework. ELDAR will address the preferences and capacities of vital actors in autocratic politics – the leader, regime support groups, and mobilized opposition groups. Special attention will be directed towards identifying and linking the different actors entering support and opposition coalitions to constituent social groups (e.g., industrial workers and landowners). Team members will also study the specific, and diverse, institutions that underpin autocracies, such as characteristics of regime parties or legislative elections. In extension, ELDAR will explicitly model – theoretically and empirically – how support- and opposition groups and institutions interact in affecting regime change and policy making in autocracies.
Examples of more specific questions include: Are autocracies less willing to use the education system for ideological indoctrination if the regime tightly controls the media environment? Are autocracies less likely to break down if they provide generous special pensions to military officers? To investigate such questions empirically, ELDAR will collect data, with global coverage and long time-series, on the numbers, social identity and other features of groups that support and oppose regimes. These efforts yield unprecedented opportunities for large-n studies of autocratic emergence and demise. Three other datasets, on education systems, buildings, and pensions, will also enable pioneering empirical studies on core policy areas in autocracies.
PoD
Key information
Project name: Policies of Dictatorships
Duration: 2020-2024
Funding: RCN FRIPRO grant (12 mill NOK, approx 1.2 mill Euro)
PI: Carl Henrik Knutsen
Participating researchers: Sirianne Dahlum, Vilde Lunnan Djuve, John Gerring, Haakon Gjerløw; Målfrid Braut Hegghammer, Magnus B. Rasmussen, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Tore Wig, Postdoc
Host institution: University of Oslo
Participating institutions: Aarhus University, PRIO, University of Texas at Austin, University of Gothenburg (V-Dem Institute)
Link to project page
Link to project application
PROJECT ABSTRACT
PoD will deliver new theoretical insights and empirical knowledge on the origins of policy-making, and the effects of such policies on regime stability and change, in dictatorships. Specifically, it covers three areas: 1. policies and strategies for repressing domestic actors; 2. security policies and decisions on interstate war and peace; 3. cooptation policies in the areas of construction, higher education, and labor market regulation and social policies.
To study the origins and effects of different policy choices, we will theorize and empirically model how they depend on both autocratic institutions of different kinds plus characteristics of regime support groups and opposition actors. We will also consider how policy choices are selected with an aim to enhance regime survival or other goals of dictators, under different constraints, and study how these policies, in turn, influence actual prospects of regime survival.
PoD will zoom in on specific contents of policies pursued in dictatorships. Rather than theorizing and studying proxies (or even outcomes) of policies, we will analyze more detailed policy features in the abovementioned areas. Even fairly similar policies may have different distributional- and other consequences, and modelling policy differences in detail is thus important. In order to study these features empirically, PoD will collect five new datasets that will mostly comprise variables with global coverage and long time series. Yet, we will also conduct more focused data collection on specific dictatorships such as China. Specifically, the five new datasets will cover features of particular large-scale building projects, nuclear arms treaties, labor market regulation and various social policy programs, curricula and other characteristics of universities, and the educational background of political leaders. These data will give unprecedented opportunities for testing our precise hypotheses on policy making and regime change in dictatorships.
Finished projects
MoDe
Key information
Project name: Mobilizing for and against Democracy
Duration: 2020-2024
Funding: RCN FRIPRO grant (12 mill NOK, approx 1.2 mill Euro)
PI: Hanne Fjelde
Participating researchers: Marianne Dahl, Sirianne Dahlum, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Nils Metternich, Espen Geelmuyden Rød, Tore Wig
Host institution: PRIO
Participating institutions: University of Gothenburg (V-Dem Institute)
Link to project page:
PROJECT ABSTRACT
The struggle over democracy remains a real and pressing concern for academics and policy makers alike. Whereas some pro-democracy movements in recent years have been successful in ousting long-lived autocrats from power, others have been violently shut down as dictators clung to power. Some opposition movements that initially prompted real democratic gains, have later seen these reversed following violent face-offs with regime supporters. Why do some pro-democracy movements succeed while others fail?
This project proposes that one answer to this important question can be found in the characteristics of the social-group coalitions that mobilize to support or oppose democracy. Mobilizing for and against Democracy (MoDe) will — through novel theory-development, an ambitious data collection, and a combination of state of the art statistical and qualitative research — offer a comprehensive picture of how democratization trajectories have been shaped by the interest, capacity and interaction of the social groups involved – from the French revolution to the present.
The focus on social groups is not novel: many scholars note how regime preferences are shaped by social groups’ standing in the economy. Yet, in lieu of comprehensive data, these conjectures have been tested with imperfect, macro-economic proxies. In addition, few studies have looked beyond economic interests to consider a broader range of groups, such as the church, students, military or ethnic groups – thereby potentially downplaying the role of values and ideas, such as nationalism, liberalism, or religious conservatism in shaping democratization trajectories.
An actor-oriented approach to democratization will offer new and valuable insights, not only on the likelihood of democratization, but also for understanding the risk of violence during democratic transitions; the type of institutions implemented in the post-transition regime; and the long-term prospect for democratic consolidation.
DEEPI
Key information
Project name: Disentangling the Economic Effects of Political Institutions
Duration: 2015-2019
Funding: RCN Young Research Talent Grant (7 mill NOK, approx 0.7 mill Euro)
PI: Carl Henrik Knutsen
Participating researchers: Agnes Cornell, Sirianne Dahlum, John Gerring, Haakon Gjerløw, Håvard M. Nygård, Magnus B. Rasmussen, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jan Teorell, Luca J. Uberti, Tore Wig, Daniel Ziblatt
Host institution: University of Oslo
Participating institutions: Aarhus University, Boston University, Harvard University, Lund University, PRIO, University of Gothenburg, University of Texas at Austin
Link to project page
Link to project application
PROJECT ABSTRACT (original from application)
DEEPI will study the impact of regime components and particular institutions
on economic growth and redistributive policies. Political institutions are
widely thought to matter; yet, it remains unclear which exact institutional
structures matter, what outcomes they matter for, and which background
factors condition these relationships. This knowledge gap stems, in part, from
the lack of data tracking detailed institutional features over time. DEEPI will
contribute to the Historical Varieties of Democracy dataset with app. 280
indicators coded back to 1800 for all states and some semi-autonomous
polities, and expand the Social Policies around the World dataset on
eligibility and redistributive potential of different social policy programs (from
19th century). These datasets, with long time series, provide unprecedented
opportunities to identify effects of particular institutions, which are often
slow-moving and highly correlated.
DEEPI will make important contributions by developing precise arguments
on how specific institutions incentivize politicians and others to pursue
actions with consequences for growth and redistribution, and properly test
implications from these arguments. DEEPI divides into three work packages
(WPs). The first disentangles effects on growth; it will e.g. analyze whether
the participation-, contestation- or civil liberties component of democracy
matters more for growth, and whether particular leader-selection institutions
in autocracies affect growth. The second analyzes how regime components
and specific institutions, e.g. authoritarian party characteristics, affect
features of redistributive policies, including what social groups are covered.
Yet, growth and redistributive policies are, likely, interrelated, and have
feedback effects on institutional design. The third WP will thus link the areas
and study dynamics and long-run effects of institutional changes through
simulation models incorporating the complexities of these relationships