Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Associate of Arts

Department

Economics

First Advisor

Dr. Chad Curtis

Second Advisor

Dr. Heather Russell

Abstract

Previous literature is divided about the impact of democracy on sovereign debt. In the context of the third wave of autocratization (Lührmann & Lindberg, 2019), this paper uses a new dataset (the Episodes of Regime Transformation) focused on regime transitions to analyze the impact of democracy and regime change on the levels of sovereign debt for a panel of 167 nations between 2008 and 2024. I examine how democracy impacts debt level, borrowing, and debt service and dovetail these results with analogous ones regarding how states of transition impact the same measures. By including this extra wrinkle of government transition, I find that democratic nations tend to hold and take more debt, but individual nations tend to have lower debt levels when they are democratic, an effect I attribute to international debt forgiveness programs.

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