To Democracy through Anocracy

Dataset for regime changes following a tripartite classification: democracy, anocracy and autocracy. The dataset is an aggregation of data from Polity IV, the World Bank's World Development Indicators and the Angus Maddison Project. We develop a world-wide trichotomous classification of political regime types that includes the intermediate category of anocracy between democracy and autocracy, as well as the subsequent hexachotomous typology of regime changes, from 1800 to 2013. We find six types of regime change: Partial opening (from autocracy to anocracy); complete opening (from anocracy to democracy); Transition (from autocracy to democracy); partial closing (from democracy to anocracy); Complete closing (from anocracy to autocracy); Breakdown (from democracy to autocracy)