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Leaders’ Foreign Travel and Democracy

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  • Kodila-Tedika, Oasis
  • Khalifa, Sherif

Abstract

This paper investigates whether the number of trips by a country's leader to the United States allows the country to adopt a more democratic system of governance and to embrace better democratic practices. To achieve its objective, the paper uses a novel variable that indicates the number of trips by a leader or a head of a government to the United States of America from 1960-2015. The baseline results show that the number of leaders’ trips to the United States has a statistically significant positive coefficient, which provides evidence that these foreign trips are positively associated with democratic governance. These results are robust even after the inclusion of several control variables identified by the literature as confounding factors of democracy, and after controlling for outliers.

Suggested Citation

  • Kodila-Tedika, Oasis & Khalifa, Sherif, 2020. "Leaders’ Foreign Travel and Democracy," MPRA Paper 98626, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:98626
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Kodila-Tedika, Oasis & Khalifa, Sherif, 2020. "The Effect of Leader’s Visits on Foreign Aid," MPRA Paper 99368, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Kodila-Tedika, Oasis & Khalifa, Sherif, 2020. "Leaders’ Foreign Travel and Foreign Investment Inflows," MPRA Paper 98625, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Kodila-Tedika, Oasis & Khalifa, Sherif, 2020. "Leaders’ Foreign Travel and Foreign Debt," MPRA Paper 98627, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Kodila-Tedika, Oasis & Khalifa, Sherif, 2020. "The Effect of U.S. Officials’ Visits on Conflict," MPRA Paper 98909, University Library of Munich, Germany.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Executive; Democracy; Leader Foreign Travel;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government

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