Index of political instability in Brazil, 1889-2009 Jaime Jordan Costantini and Mauricio Vaz Lobo Bittencourt ABSTRACT This article aims to develop an index of political instability (INS) in Brazil between 1889 and 2009, reflecting a wide-ranging set of multiple phenomena that represent conflicts between the different social groups. By presenting different definitions of what is understood by political instability in the economics literature and by using multiple historical events —coups d’état, civil conflicts, constitutional or unconstitutional overthrow and changes in the composition of 50% of the ministerial cabinet— different indicators are obtained which are then synthesized into a single index using the principal component technique, to obtain an INS for Brazil between 1889 and 2009. KEYWORDS Political history, political conditions, measurement, statistical methodology, statistical data, Brazil JEL CLASSIFICATION N00, O54, P16 AUTHORS Jaime Jordan Costantini is a member of the research group of the International Economy and Economic Development Unit (neide) of the Federal University of Paraná (ufpr), Brazil.
[email protected] Mauricio Vaz Lobo Bittencourt is a Professor for the Graduate Studies Program in Economic Development of the Federal University of Paraná (ufpr), Brazil.
[email protected] 172 CEPAL REVIEW 114 • DECEMBER 2014 I Introduction To gain a better understanding of the economic and Wen (1998), and Woo (2005), who apply economic development process in individual countries, the economics theory to study the effects of power conflicts in societies literature generally uses theoretical and empirical models that are unequal and ethnically polarized or divided. that do not have a clear definition of the important role of The third approach involves empirical research.