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The concept of political instability in economic research


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Summary of definitions and measures of political instability (selected studies)

Study Definition of political instability Measure of political instability Main conclusions
Landau [1986] Incidence of coups Number of coups Negative correlation between the number of coups and rate of economic growth.
Barro [1991] Incidence of revolutions, coups and political assassinations Number of revolutions, coups and political assassinations per year [Banks, 1979] Negative correlation between the measures of political instability and rate of economic growth.
Cukierman et al. [1992] Probability of a government change as perceived by the current government. Transfer of executive power (two alternative measures). Additional political variables include riots, political repressions, executive adjustments, and unsuccessful attempts to change the government. Countries with more unstable and polarized political systems have less efficient tax systems and rely to larger extent on seigniorage.
Grilli et al. [1991] Average government durability Political stability index Average government durability Average number of years between significant government changes Strong negative correlation between public debt and average government durability. No statistically significant effect for the political stability index.
Alesina et al. [1996] Probability of a government change Transfer of executive power (three alternative measures) Political instability negatively affects economic growth. No evidence of reverse causality.
Carmignani [2000] Probability of government collapse Probability of government collapse (estimated with a binary choice model) Supporting evidence to the theory of strategic accumulation of debt in the presence of high government volatility
Feng [2001] Political instability: variability of political freedom.Policy uncertainty: variability of government capacity to extract resources from the society. Political instability = standard deviation of the variable political freedom.Policy uncertainty = standard deviation of RPE (taken from Organski and Kugler [1980]). Political freedom promotes private investment. Political instability and policy uncertainty negatively affect private investment.
Aisen and Veiga [2008b] Basic definition focuses on probability of a government change. Supplemented by multi-dimensional indices of political instability. Transfer of executive power. Additional indices include data on assassinations, coups, constitutional changes, revolutions, and government crises. Greater political instability leads to higher seigniorage, especially in developing, less democratic and socially polarized countries, with high inflation, low access to domestic and external debt financing and with higher turnover of central bank governors.
Jong-A-Pin [2009] Multi-dimensional phenomenon encompassing politically motivated violence, mass civil protests, instability within the political regime and instability of the political regime. Multi-dimensional index of political instability combining 25 indicators (e.g., assassinations, cabinet changes, civil wars, major constitutional changes). Four dimensions of political instability have different effects on economic growth. Only the instability of the political regime has a robust and significant negative effect on economic growth.
Aisen and Veiga [2013] Multi-dimensional phenomenon; emphasis put on propensity to a government change Cabinet changes in combination with six additional indices capturing instability within and of the political regime and politically motivated violence Higher degrees of political instability are associated with lower growth rates of GDP per capita. Economic freedom and ethnic homogeneity are beneficial for economic growth.
Gurgul and Lach [2013] Probability of a government change Transfer of executive power (two alternative measures) Political instability negatively affects economic growth. No evidence of reverse causality.
Compaoré et al. [2020] Multi-dimensional phenomenon Transfer of executive power, demonstrations, major government crises, general strikes, political assassinations. Conflicts and political instability are associated with higher probability of systemic banking crises.Possible spillovers to neighboring countries.