Replication Data for "Laboratories of Democratic Renewal: Explaining Substantial Improvement in the Quality of Democracy in the American States"

Scholars of American politics have drawn attention to evidence of democratic backsliding in the U.S. states. But they have largely ignored indications of dramatic improvement in the quality of electoral democracy in numerous states. In this article, I center substantial improvement in sub-national democracy as an object of inquiry and seek to explain it. I develop a measure of the quality of electoral democracy in the states using an index of 53 indicators, track change in democratic quality across the 50 states between 2000 and 2022, and identify cases of dramatic improvement. I theorize that strong unions, high Democratic Party control of state government, an especially liberal Democratic Party, a large population of people of color, and a particularly liberal public mood may each contribute to substantial improvement in democratic quality. Using Coincidence Analysis (CNA), a configurational causal method custom-built for analyzing relations of sufficiency and necessity in quantitative data, I assess the evidence for my hypotheses. The CNA identifies three alternative paths to substantial improvement in electoral democracy in the states. The results of my analysis highlight that substantial improvement in electoral democracy is the product of political struggle centrally involving unions and the Democratic Party.