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The determinants of democracy: a sensitivity analysis Espen Geelmuyden Rød1 · Carl Henrik Knutsen2,3 · Håvard Hegre1,3 Received: 30 October 2018 / Accepted: 15 October 2019 © The Author(s) 2019

Abstract Numerous studies—operating with diverse model specifications, samples and empirical measures—suggest different economic, social, cultural, demographic, institutional and international determinants of democracy. We distinguish between democratization and democratic survival and test the sensitivities of 67 proposed determinants by varying the control variable set, democracy measure, and sample time period. Furthermore, we go beyond existing sensitivity analyses and unpack the aggregate results by analyzing how theoretically motivated control variables affect sensitivity for two prominent determinants in the democracy literature: income and Islam. Overall, our results reveal a far larger number of robust determinants of democratization than of democratic survival. For democratic survival, the only robust factors are income and a law-abiding bureaucracy. In addition, our results highlight uncertainty surrounding the relationship between income and democratization, but show that broader development processes enhance the chances of democratization. Moreover, chances of democratization are lower in countries with large Muslim populations, but that relationship is sensitive to controlling for natural resources, education and neighborhood characteristics. Other results of the sensitivity analysis show that political protests, a democratic neighborhood, and the global proportion of democracies positively influence democratization, while natural resources, majoritarian systems, and long-tenured leaders make countries less likely to democratize. Keywords  Democratization · Democracy · Development · Religion · Sensitivity analysis JEL Classification  E02 · D74 · Z12

Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (https​://doi.org/10.1007/s1112​ 7-019-00742​-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Espen Geelmuyden Rød [email protected] 1

Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

2

Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

3

Peace Research Institute Oslo, Oslo, Norway



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1 Introduction The Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 were important political events, re-igniting old academic debates. The demands for democracy in those countries made some observers declare Huntington’s (1996) argument on the incompatibility of Islam and democracy to be dead. Others dusted off Lipset’s (1959) classic modernization argument, pointing to high education levels and a large middle class in Tunisia, but voicing scepticism regarding prospects of democracy in poor Yemen and oil-producing Libya. But how much do we actually know about the determinants of democratization and democratic survival? Two decades before the Arab Spring, numerous long-lived autocracies were challenged in SubS