IESET.
Hypotheses·institutional quality·liberal_democracy_managerial_flywheel_drift

Liberal democracies experience monotonic positional drift toward larger, more redistributive states across multi-decade horizons.

The mechanism is a set of asymmetric political-economy incentives — median-voter ageing tilts the franchise toward transfer recipients, the managerial / regulatory class expands its own scope through new rules, the fiscal flywheel of "more transfers paid for by more taxes on the rich" is electorally stable, and reversal episodes (Mulroney Canada 1984-1993, NZ Rogernomics 1984-1990, Sweden tax-reform-of-the-century 1990-91, Greek post-2010 memoranda) are rare and short-lived relative to the underlying drift. Falsifiable form: the framework's composite statist-drift index (sum of pro-state-axis moves minus pro-market-axis moves, weighted by magnitude) shows a positive long-run slope for the median liberal democracy, and the share of liberal democracies with net-positive cumulative drift over their full coverage window is significantly greater than 50%.

REFUTEDengine/runs/liberal_democracy_managerial_flywheel_drift

REFUTED — median final drift = -3.00 (13/26 positive, share = 50%). The corpus does not show monotonic statist drift across the liberal-democracy panel.

confidence cueThis test cuts against the claim as written or misses its pre-declared threshold.

policy briefNeeds review

In ordinary language

In plain terms, this asks whether liberal democracy indicator is actually linked to better or worse composite statist drift final from 1976 to 2025.

plain answer

The data did not support the prediction. median final drift = -3.00 (13/26 positive, share = 50%).

why it matters

This matters because institutional quality claims should change belief only when they survive a pre-declared empirical test.

how the test works

It compares 26 country or place units from 1976 to 2025, using a descriptive design.

what was measured
What changed
  • Liberal democracy indicator
What we checked
  • Composite statist drift final
  • Composite drift slope per decade
what this does not prove

A single test is not the whole truth. It narrows the claim under a specific sample, time period, and method. Strong policy conclusions need the pattern to survive nearby tests, alternative data, and serious objections.

verification

0 input datasets, 0 unresolved missing series, provenance status: no input vintages recorded.

Results

engine/runs/liberal_democracy_managerial_flywheel_drift
1007550250197620012025USAGBRDEUFRAITAESPNLD
illustrative sketch · run pending
No coefficients yet. When the model fires, this chart will show composite_statist_drift_final across 26 sampled countries over 1976–2025.
The shapes above are stylised — none of the lines are real data.
Placeholder for liberal_democracy_managerial_flywheel_drift. Published chart will be generated from engine/runs/liberal_democracy_managerial_flywheel_drift/chart_data.json.

Who has skin in the game — schools predicting on this

1 school list this hypothesis as a test of their position. The chips below are school-level scoreboard outcomes, not a second hypothesis verdict.

hypothesis verdict vs scoreboard outcome

The banner verdict judges this hypothesis as written. The scoreboard asks whether each school's polarity-corrected prediction was right. Raw status is not a school win: SUPPORTED supports schools that needed SUPPORTED, but refutes schools that needed REFUTED.

Chicago School Monetarismwins if MIXEDpartial/no-call

Pre-registration

pre-registered
first-spec commit 4c8ce8e · 2026-07-18T22:11:21Z

Liberal democracies experience monotonic positional drift toward larger, more redistributive states across multi-decade horizons. The mechanism is a set of asymmetric political-economy incentives — median-voter ageing tilts the franchise toward transfer recipients, the managerial / regulatory class expands its own scope through new rules, the fiscal flywheel of "more transfers paid for by more taxes on the rich" is electorally stable, and reversal episodes (Mulroney Canada 1984-1993, NZ Rogernomics 1984-1990, Sweden tax-reform-of-the-century 1990-91, Greek post-2010 memoranda) are rare and short-lived relative to the underlying drift. Falsifiable form: the framework's composite statist-drift index (sum of pro-state-axis moves minus pro-market-axis moves, weighted by magnitude) shows a positive long-run slope for the median liberal democracy, and the share of liberal democracies with net-positive cumulative drift over their full coverage window is significantly greater than 50%.

Falsification criterion — what would disprove this

set before the run · honoured after

This hypothesis is considered falsified if:

SUPPORTED if (a) median liberal democracy in the sample has a final composite drift > 0; AND (b) the share of liberal democracies with final drift > 0 is statistically distinguishable from 50% at p<0.05 (one-sided binomial); AND (c) the median per-decade slope of cumulative drift is positive. PARTIAL if at least one of (a) and (c) passes but (b) does not reject 50% at p<0.05. REFUTED if the median final drift is negative or zero and the median slope is not positive.

formal test & threshold
test:      constructed-index descriptive panel + one-sided binomial share test against 50% null
threshold: median final drift > 0 AND share-positive p<0.05 (one-sided) AND median slope/decade > 0

Method

Template
descriptive
Sample
26 countries · 1976 – 2025
Evidence type
associational

Data

VariableSourceTransform
composite_statist_drift_final
outcome
constructed:from data/derived/country_drift.json (computed by scripts/compute_country_drift.py from movements/*.yaml axes_summary)tier 5
country-level: final-year value of cumulative statist-drift index
composite_drift_slope_per_decade
outcome
constructed:regression slope from data/derived/country_drift.jsontier 5
OLS slope of cumulative drift on year, scaled to 'index points per decade'
liberal_democracy_indicator
treatment
vdem:v2x_polyarchytier 4
>= 0.7 over the full sample window
gdp_per_capita_log_initial
control
world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.KDtier 2
log of 1976 (or earliest available) GDP-pc constant USD
median_age_change
control
un_wpp:median_agetier 1
Δ median age 1976→latest
fiscal_rule_presence
control
imf:fiscal_rules_datasettier 2
binary: country had a numerical fiscal rule for >= 10 years in the window
labour_share_change
control
ilostat:labour_share_gdptier 2
Δ labour share of GDP 1976→latest

● ready  · ● pending  · ● reconstruct-needed

Detailed result card

Result card — liberal_democracy_managerial_flywheel_drift

Verdict: REFUTED — median final drift = -3.00 (13/26 positive, share = 50%). The corpus does not show monotonic statist drift across the liberal-democracy panel.

Headline numbers

  • Liberal-democracy panel size (in corpus): 26 of 26
  • Net-positive drift: 13 countries · zero: 0 · net-negative: 13
  • Median final composite drift: -3.00
  • Median per-decade slope: -2.05
  • One-sided binomial p (vs 50% null): 0.5775

Falsification legs

  • (a) median final > 0: FAIL (-3.00)
  • (b) share-positive significantly > 50% at p<0.05: FAIL (p=0.5775)
  • (c) median per-decade slope > 0: FAIL (-2.05)

Per-country panel (sorted by final drift, statist-leaning first)

| Country | First year | Final drift | Slope/decade | Movements | |---|---:|---:|---:|---:| | USA | 1976 | +59.0 | +6.27 | 25 | | DEU | 1976 | +46.0 | +7.97 | 20 | | AUT | 1976 | +31.0 | +4.02 | 15 | | FRA | 1976 | +29.0 | -0.71 | 19 | | JPN | 1976 | +29.0 | +3.35 | 19 | | IRL | 1979 | +24.0 | -0.04 | 17 | | KOR | 1976 | +18.0 | +1.95 | 11 | | SWE | 1976 | +15.0 | -0.45 | 14 | | POL | 1976 | +12.0 | -1.01 | 16 | | AUS | 1976 | +12.0 | +1.20 | 9 | | GBR | 1976 | +2.0 | -0.43 | 21 | | NOR | 1976 | +2.0 | -1.48 | 9 | | BEL | 1976 | +1.0 | -2.62 | 14 | | CHE | 1976 | -7.0 | -0.58 | 3 | | HUN | 1976 | -8.0 | -3.12 | 10 | | NLD | 1977 | -11.0 | -6.66 | 18 | | ESP | 1977 | -13.0 | -5.02 | 15 | | ITA | 1976 | -14.0 | -11.05 | 27 | | DNK | 1976 | -17.0 | -5.63 | 9 | | CZE | 1993 | -19.0 | -5.84 | 10 | | NZL | 1976 | -20.0 | -5.66 | 10 | | ISR | 1977 | -20.0 | -7.93 | 16 | | FIN | 1979 | -27.0 | -6.60 | 12 | | PRT | 1976 | -28.0 | -8.08 | 10 | | CAN | 1980 | -29.0 | -6.58 | 10 | | GRC | 1976 | -36.5 | -9.69 | 14 |

Steelman live concerns

See hypotheses/steelman/liberal_democracy_managerial_flywheel_drift.md for the strongest opposing case. Particularly relevant: the index measures legislated direction not absolute level (so Greece's negative value reflects forced post-memoranda austerity from a high baseline, not a low-state outcome), and the axis weighting is author-chosen (reweighting environmental + financial regulation could flip the sign for several countries).

Provenance

Reproduces from data/derived/country_drift.json (rebuilt by scripts/compute_country_drift.py). Run with python3 engine/runs/liberal_democracy_managerial_flywheel_drift/replication.py.

Strongest opposing argument

Every hypothesis ships with its charitable opposing argument. The framework earns credibility by handling objections at their strongest, not weakest.

Authored framework. Read the transparency note.