Modeling democratic fertility
Abstract
Identifying and understanding the determinants of democracy has been the subject of a great many studies, especially in the last half of the twentieth century. Since the United States has begun openly promoting democracy to a greater degree in its foreign policies, it is logical to identify those social, political and economic conditions that either enhance or detract from their “fertility” for democracy. Committing the tremendous resources necessary to further the democratization of any state, for example Iraq, should be predicated upon a careful measurement of how well suited the state is to such a transformation. This study attempts to derive a generalized equation of democratic “fertility” by investigating a large, diverse group of independent variables in a regression model. “Polity” scores serve as the standard measure for the dependent variable in a panel study of 110 countries ultimately. The most significant variables are then employed to craft predictions reflective of democratic potential in each state.
Subject Area
Political science
Recommended Citation
Gorman, Mark Kevin, "Modeling democratic fertility" (2005). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI1430929.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI1430929