In my continuing study of monarchy I've started testing the sources I have in actual debate with republicans. The reason for this is two-fold:
-I want to see if republicans have academic research to counter what I have so far.
-I want to see how well the studies I've found so far stand up to scrutiny.
-I want to see if republicans have academic research to counter what I have so far.
-I want to see how well the studies I've found so far stand up to scrutiny.
So far republicans have either been unwilling or unable to put up counter research. Putting republicans in the position of having only emotional arguments to fall back on has been rather satisfying. The result of which is why the second objective is important: if you have no evidence of your own your only hope is to attack what evidence there is (ie. mine). The main attack has been that 'correlation does not imply causation'. True enough. For statistical studies this is taken into account by trying to isolate different variables to see which are significant. This charge led me to go over some of the studies I already have. The 2008 study by Christian Bjørnskov & Peter Kurrild‐Klitgaard, Economic Growth & Institutional Reform in Monarchies & Republics, was subjected to this attack. I decided to contact the authors to see what they had to say about this charge (and to see if they knew of any other academic studies):
Prof. Bjørnskov, Aarhus University Christian Bjørnskov: "About your questions, I haven't seen any other studies. But I will be pursuing this topic further in a project with my coauthor Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard and Martin Rode from the University of Navarre.
On the second question, we got that from the reviewers. That's the reason we're doing the IV estimates in the paper that - so far as is possible - deal with the causality issue. Besides, if we had claimed that monarchies create growth, it would be a plausible argument that growth just allowed monarchy to survive. But since we claim that monarchy only affects growth around major institutional changes, I think it's much more difficult to claim the reverse causality. Anyway, we did what we could to make sure that our estimates are not biased."
On the second question, we got that from the reviewers. That's the reason we're doing the IV estimates in the paper that - so far as is possible - deal with the causality issue. Besides, if we had claimed that monarchies create growth, it would be a plausible argument that growth just allowed monarchy to survive. But since we claim that monarchy only affects growth around major institutional changes, I think it's much more difficult to claim the reverse causality. Anyway, we did what we could to make sure that our estimates are not biased."
Prof. Kurrild‐Klitgaard Peter Kurrild‐Klitgaard: "1) We have not done much more work on the topic, but the paper was recently published in JITE and there may be changes therein relative to the working paper version you have seen: Link
2) I understand your point but I am not sure I understand why it should be a particular problem here rather than in other regression studies (and this is in fact a panel study with a large number of observations). As you can see we have controlled for a very wide variety of other factors (including a very large number of controls suggested by various reviewers), and the results have remained robust. We may still need to fully understand the precise 'link' but I have no doubt that there is a connection."
2) I understand your point but I am not sure I understand why it should be a particular problem here rather than in other regression studies (and this is in fact a panel study with a large number of observations). As you can see we have controlled for a very wide variety of other factors (including a very large number of controls suggested by various reviewers), and the results have remained robust. We may still need to fully understand the precise 'link' but I have no doubt that there is a connection."
The second study that was attacked was the 2006 study by Christian Bjørnskov, Determinants of generalized trust: A cross-country comparison. For this charge I started looking up studies on trust that were larger, more recent, and by different researchers.
The first one I found was a 2012 study called, A Blessing and a Curse? Political Institutions in the Growth and Decay of Generalized Trust: A Cross-National Panel Analysis, 1980–2009 by Blaine G. Robbins. This study has "unbalanced panel data are for 6 time periods with a total of 74 countries and 248 observations". Unlike the previous study this one focuses more on trust over time and shows that while the trust levels in monarchies are rising or stable, other observed groups differed. Most importantly it confirmed the previous work as not being a fluke.
The first one I found was a 2012 study called, A Blessing and a Curse? Political Institutions in the Growth and Decay of Generalized Trust: A Cross-National Panel Analysis, 1980–2009 by Blaine G. Robbins. This study has "unbalanced panel data are for 6 time periods with a total of 74 countries and 248 observations". Unlike the previous study this one focuses more on trust over time and shows that while the trust levels in monarchies are rising or stable, other observed groups differed. Most importantly it confirmed the previous work as not being a fluke.
The second study I found was a 2013 study called Trust, Welfare States and Income Equality: What Causes What? by Andreas Bergh and... Christian Bjørnskov (the study of trust being the good professor's primary field). Their study had a "dataset with full information on all main variables includes 104 countries, spanning the globe and all levels of economic and political development". This study also confirmed the conclusions of the previous studies. The study notes that it covers approximately 15 more least developed countries than previous studies and that the results were remarkably similar. This study is also useful for another reason. Its main goal was to see whether welfare states raised trust levels or whether increased trust created welfare states. They found that while high trust levels in a population allowed welfare states to be successfully created, welfare states themselves don't raise trust. So in the event someone says European monarchies have higher trust levels because they have stronger welfare systems you can point to this study to demonstrate the opposite.
There is in fact a few more studies related to this topic that I have, as of yet, been unable to get access to but I'll keep trying. As Christian Bjørnskov noted in his response; he and coauthor Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard will be continuing their research on monarchy with Martin Rode from the University of Navarre. I eagerly await the study's publication.
As always, the new studies have been added to Useful Links.
Loyally Yours,
A Kisaragi Colour
As always, the new studies have been added to Useful Links.
Loyally Yours,
A Kisaragi Colour
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