Актуальные проблемы Европы №2 / 2014 - страница 32

Up to now, we have not given Montesquieu his due; we have not specifically included geography as a variable. Model 3 does this by employing a «Mediterranean» variable with values of 1 for the 22 countries bordering the sea and 0 for the 19 EU countries not on the sea12. Model 3 added the binary Mediterranean variable to the previous model containing country wealth and absence of parliamentary parties. Doing so improved the explained variance of RL only slightly, to 85 percent. However, the Mediterranean variable was statistically significant in the expanded equation, indicating that the model was more properly specified.

The regression statistics generated by the three models are summarized in Table 2. It reports standardized (beta) coefficients instead of unstandardized b-coefficients to better reflect the relative impacts of the independent variables across the equations.

Table 2

Effects of wealth, parties, and location on RL Scores for 41 Nations

^>a All coefficients are significant far beyond the conventional. 05 level.

^>b n.s. = not significant in initial run; variable was dropped and analysis re-run.

The strong effects of country wealth on Rule of Law scores are clear in all three models. Because wealthy countries tend to have political parties and also tend not be on the Mediterranean, the wealth effect diminished slightly as the party system variable was added in Model 2 and the Mediterranean variable was added in Model 3. Both models adjusted for the effects of the new variables, which had been masked by country wealth.

Figure 4 graphs the results of the regression equation for Model 3, plotting each country’s predicted Rule of Law scores – based on country wealth, absence of parties, and location on the Mediterranean Sea – against its actual scores for 2011. A few of the 41 countries are identified by name to illustrate the analysis. Compare Figure 4 with Figure 3, which plotted Rule of Law scores by location and EU status. Sweden, Finland, Montenegro, and Lebanon all rated higher on Rule of Law than predicted by the regression line, while Luxembourg, Italy, and Libya all rated below. Inevitable measurement error accounts for some of the deviations from the prediction line, while country specific factors presumably account for the remainder.