The achilles heel of democracy? A macro cross-national assessment of the correlates of state legitimacy.

This study investigates the macro-level correlates of subjective state legitimacy using a cross-national panel dataset of 82 countries from 1989 to 2014. It conducts the first comprehensive multivariate assessment of the effect of democracy, while also evaluating the effects of the nationalist principle of ethnic self-rule and state endogeneity (i.e. colonialism), net of controls. The findings suggest that-contrary to certain theories and earlier empirical studies-democracy has a strong and negative association with legitimacy, which is robust across different measures of democracy and model specifications. The results also provide some evidence that adhering to the nationalist principle is related to subjective state legitimacy, while suggesting that state endogeneity is not. Moreover, democracy is the strongest correlate of subjective state legitimacy whose effect becomes stronger-rather than weaker, as some predict-in the presence of controls. Preliminary analyses provide some support to the claim that the freedom of expression contributes to the negative democracy/state legitimacy relationship.