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"original_study": {
"claim": {
"hypothesis": "Within countries classified as strong democracies (Polity IV score at least 9), greater economic-policy polarization—measured as the standard deviation of responses to the survey item on private versus government ownership—will be associated with a smaller government sector.",
"hypothesis_location": "The conditional expectation that polarization matters in democracies is developed in the theory discussion and then operationalized in the empirical section where the authors estimate models for the full sample, undemocratic countries, and strong democracies, using the “Private ownership” polarization measure.",
"statement": "Restricting the analysis to strong democracies, the association between the private-ownership polarization measure and government consumption is negative and statistically significant.",
"statement_location": "Results table 4 for the strong-democracy subsample (Polity IV ≥ 9), long specification, using the “Private” polarization measure as the key explanatory variable for government consumption (coefficient = -18.73, robust SE = 4.79, p = .01).",
"study_type": "Observational"
},
"data": {
"source": "World Values Survey (WVS) for individual responses used to construct polarization; Polity IV for regime type (strong democracy defined as Polity IV ≥ 9); country-level government consumption data (government size) and additional country covariates from standard international macro datasets.",
"wave_or_subset": "Focus on the 2000 wave for most countries, but data from the 1995 wave are used for some countries so as to increase the sample size.",
"sample_size": "Face-to-face interviews with about 1,000 respondents in 83 different countries.",
"unit_of_analysis": "Country (country-level analysis).",
"access_details": "not stated",
"notes": "Polarization is operationalized as dispersion (standard deviation) in responses to the WVS ‘private versus government ownership’ item. Strong democracies are defined using Polity IV scores of 9 or greater. The focal outcome is government consumption (government size)."
},
"method": {
"description": "The study estimates cross-country regression models of government size on polarization, with regime-based sample restrictions. The focal test estimates the association between the ‘private ownership’ polarization measure and government consumption within strong democracies (Polity IV ≥ 9) using a long specification and heteroscedasticity-robust standard errors.",
"steps": [
"Construct a country-level polarization measure as the standard deviation of survey responses to the private-versus-government ownership item.",
"Classify countries by regime type using Polity IV and restrict the analytic sample to strong democracies (Polity IV ≥ 9).",
"Measure government size using government consumption.",
"Estimate the long-specification regression of government consumption on the polarization measure for the strong-democracy subsample.",
"Compute heteroscedasticity-robust standard errors and assess statistical significance."
],
"models": "Cross-country linear regression model (long specification) with heteroscedasticity-robust standard errors.",
"outcome_variable": "Government consumption (government size).",
"independent_variables": "Polarization measured as the standard deviation of the ‘private ownership’ responses.",
"control_variables": "Geographic regional dummy variables: Africa (AFRICA), South and East Asia (ASIAE), and Latin and South America and the Caribbean (LAAM); colonial origin variables weighted by years of independence: British colonial origin (COL_UKA), Spanish colonial origin (COL_ESPA), and other colonial origin (COL_OTHA). Additional controls that may be endogenous: log GDP per capita in 2000 (LYP), trade openness in 2000 (TRADE), proportion of population ages 15–64 in 2000 (PROP1564), proportion of population above 65 in 2000 (PROP65), federal political structure indicator (FEDERAL), and OECD membership before 1993 (OECD; Turkey excluded).",
"tools_software": "not stated"
},
"results": {
"summary": "In strong democracies, higher polarization on the private-ownership dimension is associated with significantly lower government consumption, whereas the relationship is not present in undemocratic countries.",
"numerical_results": [
{
"outcome_name": "Government consumption",
"value": "-18.73",
"unit": "units of government consumption",
"effect_size": "linear regression coefficient",
"confidence_interval": {
"lower": "not stated",
"upper": "not stated",
"level": "not stated"
},
"p_value": "0.01",
"statistical_significance": 1,
"direction": "negative"
}
]
},
"metadata": {
"original_paper_id": "10.1017/S0003055410000262",
"original_paper_title": "Political Polarization and the Size of Government",
"original_paper_code": "not stated",
"original_paper_data": "not stated"
}
}
} |