Research Design and Quantitative Analysis

The chapter describes the dataset: the independent variables (presidential-election rule—runoff versus plurality—as well as years of runoff and years of plurality) and the dependent variables: levels of democracy, as measured in the Freedom House and Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) indices as well as voter turnout. The chapter discusses the countries in the dataset (all Latin American countries except Bolivia) and the years in the dataset (1990–2016, with the exception of a few countries in which the beginning of the third wave was subsequent to 1990). The chapter graphs trends in Freedom House scores, V-Dem scores, and voter turnout between 1990 and 2016. It reports the regression analysis; runoff was positively related to Freedom House and V-Dem scores at the .05 level. Years of plurality was significant to Freedom House scores at the .01 level and to V-Dem almost at the .01 level.