V-Dem Country Coding Units V9

Abstract

This document lists (a) every country in the envisioned V-Dem database, (b) the identities of each polity that comprises a country's history through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (e.g., Russia-USSR); (c) the years for which we have collected data or plan to collect data (in parentheses next to the entry); and (d) the borders of each country (wherever this might be unclear). Many dates are approximate due to the inconclusive nature of a country's history. Note that changes in sovereignty often occur by stages, and marking these stages with specific dates can be challenging. General sources for compiling this document include Wikipedia and Statesman.org. Additional sources, along with notes pertaining to specific countries, empires, and federations are contained in a separate document: "Countries, Empires, Elections (misc notes)" "Country" A V-Dem country is a political unit enjoying at least some degree of functional and/or formal sovereignty. Generally, wherever countries are formally sovereign (in international law) they are treated as countries in V-Dem. However, the recognized sovereignty of a country in international law is sometimes more extensive than the definition of a country in V-Dem. For example, China claims formal sovereignty over Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan (at least, according to the PRC), while we regard these entities as separate countries because they enjoy a good deal of autonomy and because their polities work differently than the PRC's.

Do sanctions spell disaster? Economic sanctions, political institutions, and technological safety

“….] In the V-Dem conceptual scheme, electoral democracy is understood as an essential element of any other conception of representative democracy — liberal, participatory, deliberative, egalitarian, or some other” (Coppedge et al, 2019: 39). The second measure, Vertical Accountability, focuses on the mechanism of accountability itself, which operates through elections and political parties: “Vertical accountability captures the extent to which citizens have the power to hold the government accountable.…”

Emigrant Inclusion in Home Country Elections: Theory and Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

“…If a lack of capacity is the limiting factor, we would expect emigrant voter access to be positively and significantly associated with higher levels of electoral commission capacity. I include a measure of EMB Capacity taken from the Varieties of Democracy dataset (V-Dem) (Coppedge et al 2020). EMB Capacity is a 5-point ordinal scale (0-4) capturing the degree that the electoral commission has the staff and resources to organize a quality election.…”

The Autocratic Ruling Parties Dataset: Origins, Durability, and Death

“… 23. Results are similar when including Brownlee’s recoding of Freedom House (2016) or controlling for a continuous measure of civil liberties from V-Dem (Coppedge et al 2016; see Online Appendix). In the former case, one of the significant coefficients on ruling party now narrowly misses significance, but all other results hold; in the latter case, all results hold. …”

“… 7. Coppedge et al (2016) and Geddes, Wright, and Frantz’s (2018) book have country-year data relevant to autocratic party organization, but neither is coded at the party level. The former covers characteristics of the party system rather than the ruling party.…”