PhD Students - Florian Reiche
Details
email : F.Reiche@sheffield.ac.uk
Thesis Title: Confounding Modernisation: Development and Democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa
Start Year: 2009
Supervisors
Research Topic
Even though the relationship between economic development and democracy is one of the most heavily researched subjects in comparative politics, results of empirical studies have often been ambiguous, raising more questions than they answer. Taking these ambiguities up, however, research on this area has not only explored many niches such as questions about the role of inequality and economic structure, but has also become more methodologically sophisticated over time, adding small bricks to the wall of knowledge and evidence framing this relationship. It is thus surprising, especially in the light of the perpetual discussion that has been taking place about developing and democratising sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), that so little attention has been given to SSA in quantitative research. Previous quantitative analyses have usually considered SSA by including a dummy variable in the analysis. Due to its inability to deal with heterogeneous samples and its reductionist nature, however, my study argues this approach to be inadequate for making inferences about the relationship between democracy and economic development for this region.
My dissertation seeks to remedy these shortcomings by addressing SSA as a geographical entity. Furthermore, it makes use of the latest developments in the quantitative methods and uses Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation techniques in its analysis.
Teaching
- POL 229: Political Analysis: Research Design & Data Analysis (Module Tutor 2010)
- POL 206: The Politics and Government of the European Union (Module Tutor 2009- 2010)
Office Hour: Thursday 13:00-14:00 (Room 1.41)
Research Cluster Membership
- Responses to the Crisis
- Political Participation, Citizenship & Democratic Engagement
Previous Education
- Diplom-Ökonom, Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Germany (2009)