Domestic autonomy

Quick info
Data type	Numeric
Scale	Metric
Value labels	Not applicable
Technical name	polnat_polity_sov_domestic_vdem
Category	Political factors
Label	Sovereignty: Domestic autonomy
Related indicators

Aggregated V-Dem country expert ratings whether a state is autonomous from the control of other states in conducting its domestic policy. Lower values indicate that a state is less autonomous, higher values suggest stronger autonomous from other states.

Coding rules

Ordinal ratings were aggregated to interval scale applying V-Dem's measurement model (Pemstein et al. 2020). Experts were asked "Is the state autonomous from the control of other states with respect to the conduct of domestic policy?" and the ordinal wordings of the question were (Coppedge et al. 2020b, 175):

• 0: Non-autonomous. National level authority is exercised by an external power, either by law or in practice. The most common examples of this are direct colonial rule and military occupation (e.g. quadripartite occupation of Germany in 1945). It also includes situations in which domestic actors provide de jure cover for de facto control by a foreign power (e.g. Vichy France). However, control of some part of the territory of a state by an enemy during war is not considered control by external actors if the sovereign government remains on scene and continues to wage conventional war (e.g., the USSR during WW II).
• 1: Semi-autonomous. An external political actor directly constrains the ability of domestic actors to rule, decides who can or cannot rule through formal rules or informal understandings, or precludes certain policies through explicit treaty provisions or well-understood rules of the game from which the subject state cannot withdraw. Examples include Soviet "satellite" states in Eastern Europe, and situations where colonial powers grant limited powers of national selfgovernment to their possessions (e.g., protectorates and limited home government).
• 2: Autonomous. Domestic political actors exercise political authority free of the direct control of external political actors.

Not included are "restrictions emanating from [freely negotiated] treaties (e.g., NATO), international organizations (e.g., the WTO), or confederations (e.g., the European Union)" (Coppedge et al. 2020b, 175).

Bibliographic info

Citation:

• Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, M. Steven Fish, Adam Glynn, Allen Hicken, Anna Luhrmann, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Steven Wilson, Agnes Cornell, Nazifa Alizada, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Garry Hindle, Nina Ilchenko, Laura Maxwell, Valeriya Mechkova, Juraj Medzihorsky, Johannes von Römer, Aksel Sundström, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2020a. "V-Dem [Country–Year/Country–Date] Dataset v10". Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemds20

Related publications:

• Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, M. Steven Fish, Adam Glynn, Allen Hicken, Anna Lührmann, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Agnes Cornell, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Valeriya Mechkova, Johannes von Römer, Aksel Sundtröm, Eitan Tzelgov, Luca Uberti, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2020b. "V-Dem Codebook v10" Varieties of Democracy". Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project.
• Pemstein, Daniel, Kyle L. Marquardt, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Juraj Medzihorsky, Joshua Krusell, Farhad Miri, and Johannes von Römer. 2020. "The V-Dem Measurement Model: Latent Variable Analysis for Cross-National and Cross-Temporal Expert-Coded Data". V-Dem Working Paper No. 21. 5th edition. University of Gothenburg: Varieties of Democracy Institute.

Misc

Project manager(s): Nils Düpont (A01), Paul Bederke

Data release: Not yet applicable

Revisions: Not yet applicable

Sources

• Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, M. Steven Fish, Adam Glynn, Allen Hicken, Anna Luhrmann, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Steven Wilson, Agnes Cornell, Nazifa Alizada, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Garry Hindle, Nina Ilchenko, Laura Maxwell, Valeriya Mechkova, Juraj Medzihorsky, Johannes von Römer, Aksel Sundström, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2020. ”V-Dem [Country–Year/Country–Date] Dataset v10”. Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemds20