Making Embedded Knowledge Transparent: How the V-Dem Dataset Opens New Vistas in Civil Society Research

被引:25
作者
Bernhard, Michael [1 ]
Jung, Dong-Joon [2 ]
Tzelgov, Eitan [3 ,4 ]
Coppedge, Michael [5 ]
Lindberg, Staffan I. [6 ,7 ]
机构
[1] Univ Florida, Raymond & Miriam Ehrlich Chair Polit Sci, Gainesville, FL 32611 USA
[2] Seoul Natl Univ, IPUS, Seoul, South Korea
[3] Univ East Anglia, Polit, Norwich, Norfolk, England
[4] V Dem Inst, Gothenburg, Sweden
[5] Univ Notre Dame, Polit Sci, Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA
[6] Gothenburg Univ, V Dem Inst, Gothenburg, Sweden
[7] Young Acad Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden
关键词
LEGACIES; COLLAPSE;
D O I
10.1017/S1537592717000056
中图分类号
D0 [政治学、政治理论];
学科分类号
0302 ; 030201 ;
摘要
We show how the V-Dem data opens new possibilities for studying civil society in comparative politics. We explain how V-Dem was able to extract embedded expert knowledge to create a novel set of civil society indicators for 173 countries from 1900 to the present. This data overcomes shortcomings in the basis on which inference has been made about civil society in the past by avoiding problems of sample bias that make generalization difficult or tentative. We begin with a discussion of the reemergence of civil society as a central concept in comparative politics. We then turn to the shortcomings of the existing data and discusses how the V-Dem data can overcome them. We introduce the new data, highlighting two new indicesthe core civil society index (CCSI) and the civil society participation index (CSPI)and explain how the individual indicators and the indices were created. We then demonstrate how the CCSI uses embedded expert knowledge to capture the development of civil society on the national level in Venezuela, Ghana, and Russia. We close by using the new indices to examine the dispute over whether post-communist civil society is weak. Time-series cross-sectional analysis using 2,999 country-year observations between 1989 and 2012 fails to find that post-communist civil society is substantially different from other regions, but that there are major differences between the post-Soviet subsample and other post-communist countries both in relation to other regions and each other.
引用
收藏
页码:342 / 360
页数:19
相关论文
共 77 条
[1]  
Adam Ferguson, 1995, ESSAY HIST CIVIL SOC
[2]  
Adam Przeworski, 1991, DEMOCRACY MARKET
[3]  
Agnes Cornell, 2015, COUNC EUR STUD ANN C
[4]  
Alfred Stepan, 1985, BRINGING STATE BACK
[5]  
Alfred Stepan, 1988, RETHINKING MILITARY
[6]  
Andrew Arato, 1993, NEOMARXISM DEMOCRATI
[7]  
Anna Vachudova Milada, 2005, EUROPE UNDIVIDED DEM
[8]  
[Anonymous], 1963, CIVIC CULT
[9]  
[Anonymous], 2011 CSO SUST IND CE
[10]  
[Anonymous], 1993, MAKING DEMOCRACY WOR