Explaining comparative economic development requires identifying the causes of institutional change. This column uses AI to analyse 120 years of newspaper coverage and produce a new index of uncertainty about a country's core institutions. In the countries studied, nearly every major shift in democracy happened when this index was high. Because it detects slow-building uncertainty that other risk measures miss, the index could serve as an early warning of institutional fragility.

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13 October 2026

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Vox EU

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https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/detecting-institutional-change-it-unfolds-evidence-120-years-reporting

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