Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity

Abstract

According to the economic approach to political transitions, negative transitory economic shocks can open a window of opportunity for democratic change. Testing the theory requires a source of transitory shocks to the aggregate economy. We rely on rainfall shocks in Sub-Saharan African countries. Our analysis yields that negative transitory shocks lead to significant democratic change. A transitory 10 percent drop in income is followed by an improvement in democracy scores of 9 percentage points, and by an increase in the probability of a transition to democracy of 13 percentage points.