Does Democracy Flourish in the Dark? [replication data]

We combine two principal data sources: (a) Data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS) measuring nighttime light emitted by stable lights, and (b) Administrative municipality-level data from parliamentary elections. Data for 2002--2013 elections are available at the website of Czech Statistical Office. Data from previous elections can be requested from CZSO at infoservis@czso.cz.

Aggregated DMSP data are augmented with administrative data on parliamentary elections (including snap elections) held between 1992 and 2013 (1992, 1996, 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2013). For each municipality and election we use electoral data to calculate voter turnout and electoral support for political parties and their groups: incumbent parties, pro-system parties (i.e. parties that participated in the government between 1992 and 2013 with the exception of anti-corruption parties) and the communist party.

Replication data file (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.12071151) for the current version of the paper contains the following variables:

• "MunicipalityID"...Municipality ID
• "year"...Year/Election ID
• "NoOfVoters"...Number of eligible voters
• "ValidVotes"...Number of (valid) cast votes
• "ComParty"...Electoral support of the Communist Party
• "system"...Electoral support of pro-system parties
• "turnout"...Electoral turnout
• "incumbent_count"...Votes casted for incumbent(s)
• "KSCM_count"...Votes cast for the Communist Party
• "system_count"...Votes casted for pro-system parties
• "incumbent_L1"...Electoral support of incumbent in previous election
• "incumbent_L1_count"...Votes cast for incumbent in the previous election
• "MP_k"...MPs from the winning coalition living in the municipality
• "MP_o"...MPs from the parliamentary opposition living in the municipality
• "NL_mean"...Night-light intensity (mean)
• "NL_mean_t1"...Night-light instensity in a previous year
• "dist_AT"...distance to the Austrian border
• "dist_DEw"...distance to the border of West Germany

Please note that the replication data file is insufficient for the full replication of results reported in the paper. It needs to be augmented with coordinates of "municipality reference points" that can be acquired for a small fee from the Czech Statistical Office.