Institutionalized Autocracy. Polity IV.

Quick info
Data type	Numeric
Scale	Metric
Value labels	Not applicable
Technical name	polnat_polity_autoc
Category	Political factors
Label	Creating Institutionalized Autocracy
Related indicators	Institutionalized Democracy. Polity IV. Combined Polity Score. Polity IV. Combined Polity Score (Revised p4). Polity IV. Electoral democracy index

Institutionalized Autocracy: "Authoritarian regime" in Western political discourse is a pejorative term for some very diverse kinds of political systems whose common properties are a lack of regularized political competition and concern for political freedoms. We use the more neutral term Autocracy and define it operationally in terms of the presence of a distinctive set of political characteristics. In mature form, autocracies sharply restrict or suppress competitive political participation. Their chief executives are chosen in a regularized process of selection within the political elite, and once in office they exercise power with few institutional constraints. Most modern autocracies also exercise a high degree of directiveness over social and economic activity, but we regard this as a function of political ideology and choice, not a defining property of autocracy. Social democracies also exercise relatively high degrees of directiveness. We prefer to leave open for empirical investigation the question of how Autocracy, Democracy, and Directiveness (performance) have covaried over time.

Coding rules

An eleven-point Autocracy scale is constructed additively. Our operational indicator of autocracy is derived from codings of the competitiveness of political participation (variable 2.6), the regulation of participation (variable 2.5), the openness and competitiveness of executive recruitment(variables 2.2 and 2.3), and constraints on the chief executive (variable 2.4) using the following weights:

Competitiveness of Executive Recruitment (XRCOMP):
(1) Selection +2

Openness of Executive Recruitment (XROPEN):
note: only if XRCOMP is Election (3) or Transitional (2)
(1) Closed +1
(2) Dual/designation +1

Constraint on Chief Executive (XCONST):
(4) Restricted +2
(3) Sectarian +1

Competitiveness of Political Participation (PARCOMP):
(1) Repressed +2
(2) Suppressed +1

Bibliographic info

Citation: Marshall, Monty G., Ted Robert Gurr, and Keith Jaggers. 2017. Dataset Users’ Manual. Polity IV Project. Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2016. Center for Systemic Peace. https://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/p4manualv2016.pdf.

Related publications: related publications

Misc

Project manager(s): project managers

Data release:

• Version 0.001: Initial release

Revisions: No revisions yet

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