Regime Classification Exercise: Further Instructions

Due: Midnight 24 April 2015 (in about a month), in this here blog. Each tutorial group will submit one proposal; we’ll continue to work on these proposals over the next couple of tutorial sessions.

(This document also available on dropbox and on Blackboard).

The part of the Regime Classification Exercise you have been working on in your tutorial groups involves creating a set of criteria that can be used to classify regimes as democratic or not, or more or less democratic than others, or according to some other distinction. Your system may describe how to construct a simple index of democracy from 0 to 10, or it may describe a two dimensional compass [with two independent factors on the x and y axis and “more democratic” on one quadrant, as in the picture I’ve been using in class], or it may describe how to determine whether a regime belongs in one of number of categories [e.g., democracy, communist dictatorship, military dictatorship, etc.], etc. As long as the system clearly and consistently identifies different regimes, anything goes.

You should have a some idea by now of how your group might want to classify political regimes; but if you are still unsure, you may want to look at the “checklist” questions used by Freedom House to guide its researchers here: http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2012/checklist-questions-and-guidelines. You may also look at examples of classification systems from previous years (e.g., here and here). Your system may look similar to that (or may use completely different criteria, since students in previous years looked at different research questions). You should also include some additional information about how to weigh and interpret the answers to your checklist questions, and some justification for your choices (why look at these criteria and not others?).

When designing the criteria, the research question should be kept in mind: Which types of political regimes are most likely to be corrupt? So your questions should guide a researcher (you) to determine a regime type AND to determine how to measure corruption (or at least which publicly available measure of corruption to use).

Also, remember that the point is not necessarily to create the most accurate classification system possible – with many variables and requiring extensive research – but to identify a few criteria that can serve to quickly and consistently identify the regime type of a country for the purposes of the question. Keep in mind that you’ll be doing the research; this means that you should try to select criteria for which information is likely to be widely available, and which other students in the class are likely to be able to understand. One way of ensuring that the system is workable is to pre-test it, by selecting a few cases (like the countries used in the first tutorial) and asking various members of the group to classify them (separately) to see if everyone reaches the same answer.

Try to be as specific as possible, and consider potential pitfalls. For example, if one of your checklist questions asks about whether elections are held, what should the answer be for years in which no elections are held? Should students say “yes” if elections were held recently? What should your answer be if the country happens to be experiencing a civil war? If one of your questions asks about corruption, what should count as high or low corruption? “Subjective” judgments cannot be completely eliminated, but you should try to provide guidance that other students can use (for example, “look for reports of widespread embezzlement by senior government figures” or “use the judgments of transparency international if available”).

Along with your classification system, you may also want to submit additional information. You may want to focus on a specific period in time, or a certain geographical area, or a particular kind of regime. Justification for why you wish to do so should be provided; otherwise I will assume that we will divide all the countries of the world among the class (3 countries per person should provide sufficient coverage), and will provide a time period for investigation.

Also due at the same time your tutorial group submits this is the individual self-assessment of your participation in this stage of the project. This is worth 5%. A link to a self-assessment form will be available at the time.

The various classification systems will be open for comment and critique for a period of time, when the class will vote on which system to use in the next stage of the assignment.