Abstract:
Most data on regime types are based on democracy and autocracy as the relevant categories. In the context of conflict analyses, this binary and single dimensional perception of regime has prevented focus on and theory building about the mechanisms inherent to democracy and autocracy. Most evident is the Democratic Peace theory’s failure to explain the impact of norms and institutions for democratic states’ conflict behavior internationally. The dataset presented here offers a disaggregation of democracy along three institutional dimensions: electoral system, executive system, and federal structure. Much of the data currently available are inconsistent across states and over time. The data presented here comply with the system membership definition and temporal availability most often applied in the study of conflict.
