DOI: 10.3886/icpsr20440.v1
title: Nations, Development, and Democracy, 1800-2005
title: Version 1

description: To serve the scholarly community's growing interest in the
 process of democratization in the world over the past 200 years, this
 data collection consists of a compiled database that assesses 187 (20
 historical and 167 contemporary) sovereign countries from 1800-2005.
 The database was constructed by merging variables derived from these
 existing datasets: (1) POLITY III: REGIME TYPE AND POLITICAL AUTHORITY
 1800-1994 (Jagger and Gurr 1995) [ICPSR 6695], (2) CROSS-NATIONAL TIME
 SERIES, 1815-1973 (Banks 1993) [ICPSR 7412], (3) Polity IV (Jagger and
 Gurr 2005), (4) Political Freedom Indicators (Freedom House 2000), (5)
 World Development Indicators 1960-1998 (World Bank 1999), and (6)
 World Development Indicators 1960-2005 (World Bank 2006). In addition,
 missing variables were coded from the Statesman's Yearbook (2000), the
 World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators (Taylor and Jodice
 1983), Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Relations
 (Osmanczyk 1982), and the journal, "Freedom Review," published by
 Freedom House. A sovereign country was defined as an independent
 member of the international system, which had a population greater
 than 500,000. In the database, for each sovereign country there are
 over 120 indicators, annually recorded, that represent: (1) the level
 of democratic growth, (2) the countries' development depicted by
 socioeconomic, demographic, and geographical characteristics, and (3)
 diffusion indicators. In addition, to add precision to the
 measurement, modifications of the core indicators were also
recorded. The database is complimented by an index of variables.
description: To complement and to test the derived data of Polity III and
Polity IV and the World Bank and Banks data, data derived from two
different sources on overlapping years were correlated. The obtained
correlations' scores were above 0.9. The most complex was testing used
to assess Polity III and Polity IV data. For testing of Polity data,
the principal investigator rendered the Freedom House scale scores of
democracy compatible with Jagger and Gurr's Polity III scale.
Accordingly, the 13-point democracy scale used by Freedom House was
modified to the 11-point scale used in Polity III. To assess the
comparability of the Polity III data with the rescaled Freedom House
indicator, the Freedom House indicators were derived for 161 countries
for the years 1990-1994, and then correlated with the Polity index for
the same years. The correlation was r = 0.97 (p less than 0.01). Each component
was weighted 0-3 or 0-4 based on the presence of 2-7 variables per
component, and a total democratization score was the sum of the five
component weights. The comparability of Polity III with Freedom House
data was assessed by correlating the two sets of data, and the
obtained correlation score was above 0.90 (p less than 0.01).
description: All sovereign, historical, and contemporary countries in
the world with populations greater than 500,000.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: Nations, Development, and Democracy, 1800-2005
description: The 187 sovereign countries (20 historical and 167
 contemporary) that were independent members of the international
 system and had populations greater than 500,000 from the years 1800
to 2005.
description: (1) Blank value labels are considered missing.
 Exceptions involve the variables XRREG, XRCOMP, XCONST, PARREG,
 PARCOMP, AUTONOMY, FREPRESS, FRDEMNST, EQUALAW, FRCORRUP, and
 FRPERSON. These were weighted to compare the Freedom House and Jagger
 and Gurr's scales. These variables were reformated to match the data.
 (2) The following values are unknown: 0 in PREMIER, 0 in MONO, and
 .. in IT_TVS_C. (3) The data contain too many values to test the Stata
 setup file. Variables with several thousand values may need to have
the values recoded into groups for testing.