What Make Democracy Possible: A Predictive Modeling Approach

Summary

Data Mining techniques have been successfully applied to many disciplines, especially in business intelligence, medical and health related problems. This paper presents a case study using data mining predictive modeling techniques for identifying important factors associated with the making of democracy. Democracy has been a paradoxical phenomenon; it has appeared in countries that defy the theoretically proposed prerequisites such as high level of economic development, low level of illiteracy, and strong middle class among others. While other countries that have these prerequisites barely witnessed successful democratic transitions. This discrepancy between theory and empirical observation calls for an investigation of factors beyond social & economic factors associated with democratization. A predictive modeling approach will be applied to develop models using political factors, social-economic factors, degree of development, etc. to predict an index derived from the institutional and normative aspects of democracy.