Dictators, Democracies, and Discoveries: Political Institutions and the Creation of Knowledge

Abstract:

We investigate the role of political institutions in shaping global knowledge production. Using a newly assembled global dataset covering universities, scientists, publications, Nobel Prize–winning discoveries, and technological breakthroughs from 1900 to the present, we find that institutional quality is a key determinant of scientific production. Countries with high-quality institutions build larger academic sectors and generate substantially more frontier research and Nobel prize-winning discoveries. Event-study evidence from sharp institutional improvements and deteriorations confirms that changes in political institutions lead to sustained shifts in scientific production. The effects operate both through scale and productivity: conditional on the size of the research workforce, higher-quality institutions produce more scientific output. Institutions also shape the breadth of inquiry: autocracies channel research into a narrower set of fields, achieving excellence in some areas but lacking the broad exploration of ideas that characterizes democracies. Finally, we show that institutional quality increases not only published research but also path-breaking technological discoveries, including those outside academic journals. Together, the results identify political institutions as a central determinant of global knowledge creation.