I am trying to ascertain whether civil society drives state reform, or whether civil society responds to state reform in repressive contexts*. The Polity IV data has excellent indicators of each over time.
To test which effect is greater, I tried distributed lags analysis, testing the correlation between the two variables at different time lags. However I only want to analyse shifts in one direction (towards democracy), for countries that are initially repressive, (so asking whether positive transitions in one are proceeded by the other). Is there a better method?
Any guidance very gratefully received,
Chris
* In my interviews and surveys, the international community consensus is
that the state must first open ‘associational space’ before civil society can be effective, whereas local peacebuilders describe civil society forcing reform on a reluctant governments.