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

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 formation, persistence, and strength of international research collaboration ties. This study combines longitudinal data between 2008 and 2017 from the Varieties of Democracy Institute, World Bank Indicators, Scopus, and Web of Science bibliometric data. Methods of analysis include temporal and weighted exponential random graph models (ERGM). The results suggest positive significant effects of both democratic governance on international research collaboration and homophily between countries with similar levels of democratic governance. The results also show the importance of exogenous economic, population, and geo-political factors, as well as endogenous network factors including preferential attachment and transitivity.