About the Democratic Erosion Event Dataset
Democratic erosion is a relatively new phenomenon. In the past, democracies typically collapsed in coups or other forms of sudden irregular regime change. Today, democracies tend to disintegrate slowly over time. Because the phenomenon is so new, there is little systematic empirical data to help scholars and practitioners understand it.
Led by Dr. Jessica Gottlieb and a team of Master’s students at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government & Public Service, we have built a uniquely rich Democratic Erosion Event Dataset (DEED) that captures the precursors and symptoms of democratic erosion across countries and over time. The dataset also records acts of resistance to democratic erosion from within the media, bureaucracy and civil society.
DEED was developed in collaboration with USAID’s Center for Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights and Governance (DRG), and draws directly on country case studies that our students write as part of the Democratic Erosion consortium.
Accessing the data
You can use our data dashboard to explore the dataset, focusing on the countries, regions or events that are most relevant to you.
You can also access the raw data, along with the coding methodology and case selection criteria.
Using the data
There are lots of ways to use DEED:
- Want to know if democratic erosion follows similar trajectories in Africa and Western Europe? Track trends in DEED using simple data visualizations and descriptive statistics.
- Want to know which risk factors are most likely to predict democratic erosion? Test for correlations between DEED precursors and symptoms across countries and over time.
- Want to know whether democratic erosion is more likely in countries with high levels of poverty or economic inequality? Merge DEED with other sources of data like the World Bank’s World Development Indicators or the UN’s Human Development Data.
If you’re looking for examples, check out the data visualizations and descriptive statistics prepared by our students, or read the Texas A&M capstone reports from 2018, 2019 or 2020, which include ideas for more potential uses of the dataset.
Citing the data
Please cite the DEED raw data and/or data dashboard as follows:
Gottlieb, Jessica, Robert Blair, Hannah Baron, Aries Arugay, Cameron Ballard-Rosa, Don Davidson, Laura Gamboa, Guy Grossman, Shelby Grossman, Christina Kulich-Vamvakas, Nancy Lapp, Jennifer McCoy, Amanda Robinson, Steven Rosenzweig, Eric Royer, Cathy Lisa Schneider, Susan Stokes, and Megan Turnbull. 2020. “Democratic Erosion Event Dataset v4.” Democratic Erosion: A Cross-University Collaboration.
Stay in touch
Sign up here to learn more about upcoming additions to the dataset. For other inquiries please contact the dataset coordinator, Dr. Jessica Gottlieb.