Democratic Governance and International Research Collaboration: A Longitudinal Analysis of the Global Science Network

TL;DR

This study empirically examines how democratic governance influences international research collaboration networks globally, revealing that democracies tend to form stronger ties, influenced by economic, geographical, and network factors.

Contribution

It provides the first large-scale longitudinal analysis linking democratic governance to international research collaboration at the country level.

Findings

Democracies have stronger international research ties.

Homophily exists between countries with similar democratic levels.

Economic and geographical factors also significantly influence collaboration.

Abstract

The democracy-science relationship has traditionally been examined through philosophical conjecture and single country case studies. There remains limited global scale empirical research on the topic. This study explores country level factors related to the dynamics of the global scientific research collaboration network, focusing on structural associations between democratic governance and the strength of international research collaboration ties. This study combines longitudinal data on 170 countries between 2008 and 2017 from the Varieties of Democracy Institute, World Bank Indicators, Scopus, and Web of Science bibliometric data. Methods of analysis include descriptive network analysis, temporal exponential random graph models (TERGM), and valued exponential random graph models (VERGM). The results suggest positive significant effects of democratic governance on the formation and strength of international research collaboration ties, as well as homophily between countries with similar levels of democratic governance. The results also show the importance of exogenous factors, such as GDP, population size, and geographical distance, as well as endogenous network factors including preferential attachment and transitivity.