Information, Democracy, and Autocracy
Economic Transparency and Political (In)Stability

Increasing economic transparency benefits democracy: it helps elections work. Yet under autocracy, transparency contributes to political instability.

James R. Hollyer (Author), B. Peter Rosendorff (Author), James Raymond Vreeland (Author)

9781108420723, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 September 2018

396 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 2.6 cm, 0.67 kg

'Information, Democracy, and Autocracy provides a novel theoretical approach to leveraging meaningful data out of strategically missing data …' Steven Lloyd Wilson, Perspectives on Politics

Advocates for economic development often call for greater transparency. But what does transparency really mean? What are its consequences? This breakthrough book demonstrates how information impacts major political phenomena, including mass protest, the survival of dictatorships, democratic stability, as well as economic performance. The book introduces a new measure of a specific facet of transparency: the dissemination of economic data. Analysis shows that democracies make economic data more available than do similarly developed autocracies. Transparency attracts investment and makes democracies more resilient to breakdown. But transparency has a dubious consequence under autocracy: political instability. Mass-unrest becomes more likely, and transparency can facilitate democratic transition - but most often a new despotic regime displaces the old. Autocratic leaders may also turn these threats to their advantage, using the risk of mass-unrest that transparency portends to unify the ruling elite. Policy-makers must recognize the trade-offs transparency entails.

1. A new approach to the study of transparency
2. The content of information
3. The HRV index of transparency
4. Comparing measures of transparency
5. Transparency and (in)stability – the theory
6. The evidence – examples and descriptive data
7. The evidence – regression analyses
8. Transparency and investment
9. Why democracies disseminate more data than autocracies
10. Why autocrats disclose
11. Consequences of transparency
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Economics, finance, business & management [K], Comparative politics [JPB], Politics & government [JP], Society & social sciences [J]