This is a categorical variable indicating a country's regime type at the end of a given year. The data for this variable come from Cheibub, Gandhi and Vreeland (2010), which we updated through 2011.

1. Parliamentary democracy
2. Semi-presidential democracy
3. Presidential democracy
4. Civilian dictatorship
5. Military dictatorship
6. Royal dictatorship

Not all elections that occur when a regime is classified as a dictatorship (regime = 4-6) are dictatorial. This apparent anomaly has to do with the fact that a country's regime type is coded based on its status at the end of a given year. Elections like those in Argentina 1962, Nicaragua 1983, Philippines 1965, and Thailand 1976 all preceded a democratic collapse in the same year. Although these countries are considered dictatorial at the end of these years, we code these particular elections as democratic and therefore include them in our data set. We should note that we code the 1997 elections in Kenya, the 1999 elections in Guinea Bissau, the 2005 elections in Liberia, the 2006 elections in Mauritania, and the 2008 elections in Bangladesh as democratic even though Cheibub, Gandhi and Vreeland (2010) do not code these countries as democratic until the following year. The reason for this is that these elections are the primary reason cited by Cheibub, Gandhi and Vreeland (2010) for their eventual recoding of these countries as democratic. As an example, Cheibub, Gandhi and Vreeland (2010) do not code Liberia as democratic until 2006 despite the fact that presidential elections took place in October 2005, because the winner of these elections, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, did not officially take office until January 2006. The bottom line is that there are a few observations in our data set of democratic elections where regime indicates that the country was a dictatorship by the end of the year.