18
•
Where there is a high probability of contestation through elections – and the
results of elections are likely to be upheld – civil conflict is accommodated
through peaceful means and civil war is unlikely.
•
Civil war is most likely to occur in political systems where there is a mid- level
probability of contestation through elections, and the same mid- level probability
that the results of elections will be subverted. Under these uncertain conditions,
civil war is likely to erupt.
The ideal measure to test this story is the estimated probability that key offices
will be filled through contested elections – the continuous Schumpeterian conception of
democracy. Table 4 presents these results using the six specifications of the probability of
democracy from Table 2. Note that with my conception of democracy, I employ
estimates – not measurements – as a variable. Recall that this is because probability of
democracy cannot be observed, only estimated. While both estimates and measurements
involve error, the errors are of a different nature. Along with each estimate is a degree of
uncertainty, captured by the standard errors in Table 2.
To account for this, I employed the following method.
17
First, using Clarify
software (King et al. 2000), I sampled from the distribution of coefficients from the Table
2 probit estimates of the determinants of democracy. I did so 10 times to generate 10
different estimates of the probability of democracy (for each of the six specifications).
Next, I included alternatively the 10 different estimates of the probability of democracy
in the estimation of incidence of civil war. The coefficients for the 10 different trials were
then averaged to produced the coefficients reported in Table 4. The standard errors were
also averaged and then adjusted for the fact that the coefficients from different trials have
different standard errors.
18
This procedure was repeated separately for each of the six
specifications of democracy from Table 2.
17
The method follows King et al. (2001). I am grateful to Ken Scheve and Mike Tomz
for their help in explaining the procedure.
18
The formula for the adjustment is found in King et al. (2001), p53, equation 3.
Convention