Mapping Political Regime Developments in Interwar Europe: A Multidimensional Approach

Scholars have argued that Interwar Europe presents a quasi-experimental setting for studying the causes of political regime change. However, all previous cross-national analyses of regime change in the interwar period have been constrained by a dearth of data on the dependent variable. Comparative studies have therefore largely been confined to crisp distinctions between democratic survival and breakdown. This situation has made scholars neglect more gradual patterns of regime change, such as the increased repression of the 1930s that took place both within countries where democracy had already broken down and countries where democracy survived at least until the German occupation. In this paper, we enlist new data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project to map patterns of democratic deepening and regression in the interwar period. We base our mapping on a multi-dimensional conception of democracy covering electoral rights, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Our aim is to identify syndromes and sequences of especially de-democratization in this period. This descriptive framework enables scholars to précise their research questions about interwar regime change in general and, in particular, to analyze the impacts of factors such as economic crisis on interwar regime developments. Furthermore, our mapping facilitates comparisons with other periods, such as the post-1989 period where actual democratic breakdowns have been rare but more gradual regressions have been more common.