IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/erg/wpaper/958.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Understanding Democratic Transition Using Self-Organizing Maps: a Special Focus on Arab Spring Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Houda Haffoudhi

    (FSEGN, University of Carthage)

  • Racem Mehdi
  • Gam Abdelkader

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to identify, in the light of the Arab spring, the conditions favorable for democratic transition and to analyze the specific experience of Arab countries concerned by regime change. We use a large set of indicators and the self-organizing map (SOM) approach as an alternative analytical tool. Countries are then mapped considering data related to 33 indicators from 121 countries, four years (1984, 1991, 2002 and 2013), including economic, social, demographic, societal and political variables, as well as indicators related to institutional framework. Mapping allows us to link countries configuration to their democratization levels. Then, the SVM clustering methodology is used to cluster the prototypes produced by the SOM in order to discriminate the future successes and to determine the most influential variable on democratic success. Countries neighborhoods are based on similarity in particular characteristics. Our mapping highlights especially population age structure, globalization, health indicators, education and women participation in the society as the most important variables determining each country location which could be related to democracy level and its change over time. In Addition, unemployment, corruption, democratic accountability, and law and order, are the most influential variables distinguishing failure from democratic transition success.

Suggested Citation

  • Houda Haffoudhi & Racem Mehdi & Gam Abdelkader, 2015. "Understanding Democratic Transition Using Self-Organizing Maps: a Special Focus on Arab Spring Countries," Working Papers 958, Economic Research Forum, revised Oct 2015.
    • Handle: RePEc:erg:wpaper:958
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/958.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://bit.ly/2mnwx5Q
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daron Acemoglu, 2006. "Modeling Inefficient Institutions," NBER Working Papers 11940, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Acemoglu,Daron & Robinson,James A., 2009. "Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521671422, September.
    3. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2001. "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1369-1401, December.
    4. Robert J. Barro, 1999. "Determinants of Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(S6), pages 158-183, December.
    5. Lipset, Seymour Martin, 1959. "Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy1," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 53(1), pages 69-105, March.
    6. Sophie Ponthieux & Marie Cottrell, 2001. "Living conditions: classification of households using the Kohonen algorithm," Post-Print hal-00133837, HAL.
    7. Yi Feng & Paul J. Zak, 1999. "The Determinants of Democratic Transitions," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 43(2), pages 162-177, April.
    8. Przeworski,Adam & Alvarez,Michael E. & Cheibub,Jose Antonio & Limongi,Fernando, 2000. "Democracy and Development," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521793797, September.
    9. Przeworski,Adam & Alvarez,Michael E. & Cheibub,Jose Antonio & Limongi,Fernando, 2000. "Democracy and Development," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521790321, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Houda Haffoudhi & Rihab Bellakhal, 2020. "Threshold Effect of Globalization on Democracy: the Role of Demography," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 11(4), pages 1690-1707, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Matteo Cervellati & Piergiuseppe Fortunato & Uwe Sunde, 2008. "Hobbes to Rousseau: Inequality, Institutions and Development," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(531), pages 1354-1384, August.
    2. Papaioannou, Elias & Siourounis, Gregorios, 2008. "Economic and social factors driving the third wave of democratization," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 365-387, September.
    3. Sunde, Uwe & Fortunato, Piergiuseppe & Cervellati, Matteo, 2011. "Democratization and Civil Liberties: The Role of Violence During the Transition," CEPR Discussion Papers 8315, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Richard Bluhm & Adam Szirmai, 2011. "Institutions, Inequality and Growth: A review of theory and evidence on the institutional determinants of growth and inequality," Papers inwopa634, Innocenti Working Papers.
    5. Markus Brückner & Antonio Ciccone & Andrea Tesei, 2012. "Oil Price Shocks, Income, and Democracy," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(2), pages 389-399, May.
    6. Acemoglu, Daron & Johnson, Simon & Robinson, James A. & Yared, Pierre, 2009. "Reevaluating the modernization hypothesis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(8), pages 1043-1058, November.
    7. Sunde, Uwe & Cervellati, Matteo & Jung, Florian & Vischer, Thomas, 2012. "Income, Democracy, and Critical Junctures," CEPR Discussion Papers 9259, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Cervellati Matteo & Fortunato Piergiuseppe & Sunde Uwe, 2012. "Consensual and Conflictual Democratization," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-51, December.
    9. Raouf Boucekkine & Paolo Giovanni Piacquadio & Fabien Prieur, 2016. "A Lipsetian Theory of Democratization: Development, Education, Inequality, and Resources," CESifo Working Paper Series 6283, CESifo.
    10. Boucekkine, Raouf & Piacquadio, Paolo G. & Prieur, Fabien, 2019. "A Lipsetian theory of voluntary power handover," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 269-291.
    11. Markus Brückner & Antonio Ciccone, 2011. "Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(3), pages 923-947, May.
    12. Martin Gassebner & Michael J. Lamla & James Raymond Vreeland, 2013. "Extreme Bounds of Democracy," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 57(2), pages 171-197, April.
    13. Kangoye, Thierry, 2011. "Does Foreign Aid Promote Democracy?," WIDER Working Paper Series 064, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    14. Besley, Timothy & Kudamatsu, Masayuki, 2007. "Making autocracy work," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 3764, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Lin, Faqin & Sim, Nicholas C.S., 2014. "Baltic Dry Index and the democratic window of opportunity," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 143-159.
    16. Nedra Baklouti & Younes Boujelbene, 2018. "The Nexus Between Democracy and Economic Growth: Evidence from Dynamic Simultaneous-Equations Models," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 9(3), pages 980-998, September.
    17. Udi Sommer, 2018. "Women, Demography, and Politics: How Lower Fertility Rates Lead to Democracy," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(2), pages 559-586, April.
    18. Aidt, Toke S. & Jensen, Peter S., 2014. "Workers of the world, unite! Franchise extensions and the threat of revolution in Europe, 1820–1938," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 52-75.
    19. Castelló-Climent, Amparo, 2008. "On the distribution of education and democracy," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 179-190, October.
    20. Thierry Kangoye, 2011. "Does Foreign Aid Promote Democracy?," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2011-064, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:erg:wpaper:958. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sherine Ghoneim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/erfaceg.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.