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49. In addition, it should be noted that the state of the country's economy had no significant effect. The measure of the state of the economy is the country's gross domestic product per capita for the previous year. These data are measured in U.S. dollars at constant 1990 prices and are taken from United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis, Statistical Division, Statistical Yearbook, annual editions (New York: 1993–97).

50. The independent variable is the minority's proportion of the country's total population in 1985. In these data the largest minority in fact constitutes 40.6 percent of the country's population and the smallest constitutes less than 1.0 percent. (The proportion of the majority or titular group of a country is set to zero in the numerator, but not in the denominator. Thus, the lowest value is actually zero.) These data are derived from Bromlei, Narody mira.

51. Cultural heterogeneity is operationalized as a dichotomous variable based on the major language spoken by the ethnic group and the official language of the central government. When the two belong to the same linguistic phylum and group, they are classified as ethnically homogeneous dyads; otherwise, as diverse dyads. See the argument in Raymond W. Basch, “The Effects of Ethnic Separation on Democratization: A Comparative Study,” East European Quarterly 32, no. 2 (June 1998): 221–42.

52. Democratization is operationalized by the Freedom House's (1999) index of political liberties and the inclusiveness of the regimes. Specifically, the Freedom House index is weighted by the proportion of adults registered to vote and transformed so that it ranges from 7 (most democratic) to 1 (least democratic). The sources of data are the annual editions of Freedom House, Freedom in the World: Political Rights and Civil Liberties (New York, 1987–1996) and International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, Voter Turnout from 1945 to 1997: A Global Report on Political Participation (Stockholm, 1998).

53. The coefficient estimate on ethnoconstitutional crises is marginally significant, but the diagnostic runs show that it is not robust.

54. In the pooled cross-section-time-series analysis, this is transformed so that countries coded as 4 on the 7-point Democratization Index are assigned the lowest score and countries coded as either 7 (most democratic) or 1 (least democratic) on the democratization index are assigned the highest scores. Specifically, the transformed democratization index in the third equation is the absolute value of the remainder from the original democratization index minus 4. This “curvilinear” specification offers a better “fit” to the data in the third equation than does the original index.

55. Two variables operationalize ethnofederalism. The first is a dichotomous variable that indicates whether the state is federal or at least includes some autonomous regions within it—that is, either symmetrical or asymmetrical federalism. The second is a dichotomous variable that indicates whether the ethnic group within the specific ethnopolitical dyad has been granted a first-order or a second-order autonomous region. These data are from Furtak, Robert K., The Political Systems of the Socialist States: An Introduction to Marxist-Leninist Regimes (Brighton, Eng., 1986)Google Scholar, and the annual editions of The Europa World Yearbook (London, 1987–98). Ethnic groups without first- or second-order autonomy in a federal or asymmetrically federal state are coded 1 on the first variable, but 0 on the second. Ethnic groups with either first- or second-order autonomy are coded 1 on the first variable as well as on the second.

56. The estimator for autonomy is quite robust, but the estimator for federalism is not. If the true value of the latter is zero, then the third line in table 6 would be identical to the second, the second value in the first line would be unchanged, but the first and third values in the first line would be higher. I report the values returned by the original equations so that I do not knowingly overstate the effect.

57. The source of the data is Minahan, Nations without States, and Pipes, Richard, The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917–1923, rev. ed. (New York, 1968)Google Scholar.

58. In these data all regimes are classified as soviet, parliamentary, presidential, semipresidential, or transitional. These classifications are based on Easter, Gerald, “Preference for Presidentialism: Postcommunist Regime Change in Russia and the NIS,” World Politics 49, no. 2 (January 1997): 184–211 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frye, Timothy, “A Politics of Institutional Choice: Post-Communist Presidencies,” Comparative Political Studies 30, no. 5 (October 1997): 523–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Furtak, Political Systems of Socialist States. They indicate the status of the regime on 1 January at the beginning of the time period—either the period 1990–1995 or each year from 1987 to 1996.

59. Two alternative specifications fail to yield significant results. First, in none of the equations is semipresidentialism significant. Combining elements of both parliamentarism and presidentialism, semipresidentialism neither facilitates escalation of ethnopolitical conflict, like parliamentarism, nor deters it, like presidentialism. Second, in order to explore the possibility that presidentialism's success is due to its association with authoritarianism in such areas as Central Asia, an alternative measure of authoritarian presidentialism (weighted by the Freedom House index of political liberties) was substituted. The resulting coefficient estimate is not statistically significant.