Christian Bjørnskov

Biographic Data

ID267045
NAMEChristian Bjørnskov
GIVEN NAMESChristian
FAMILY NAMEBjørnskov
SIGNATUREBJØRNSKOV C
AFFILIATIONSAarhus University
ORCID0000-0002-9765-913X
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS72
TOTAL CITATIONS578
AUTHOR COUNT72
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2003
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX13

  • The Rule of Law Predicts Trust in Journalists

    Niclas Berggren, Christian Bjørnskov et al.ARTICLEThe Journal of Law and Economics2026

    Insufficient trust in journalists creates space for disinformation. We ask whether institutions can safeguard trust in journalists. Our main finding is that the rule of law is positively and robustly associated with trust in journalists. The rule of law arguably promotes trustworthy behavior by punishing deceit and dishonesty, thereby fostering trust. Robustness checks support this result. Moderation analysis indicates that the relationship betwe…

  • Covid and the constitution: Unlawful states of emergency during the pandemic

    Open AccessChristian Bjørnskov, Stefan VoigtARTICLEEuropean Journal of Law and…2026

    The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 gave rise to an unprecedented number of emergency declarations across the world. Recent research shows that the transfer of substantial discretionary power to the executive branch in an emergency often gives rise to unlawful and unconstitutional political behaviour. In this paper, we explore if the large number of emergencies during the pandemic were special. We document that they were, in the sense that unl…

  • Capitalism and Femicide: An Empirical Inquiry

    Open AccessChristian Bjørnskov, Martin RodeARTICLEKyklos2026

    This study investigates the claim that capitalism (or neoliberal reforms) is associated with higher rates of femicide, which is often identified as an outcome of the capitalist exploitation of women in parts of the feminist literature. Employing a panel of 163 countries observed between 1990 and 2023, we find no significantly positive relationship between the Economic Freedom of the World index and different measures that approximate the concept …

  • Legislative populism, ideological alignment, and human freedom

    Open AccessChristian Bjørnskov, Niclas BerggrenARTICLEEuropean Journal of Political…2026

    Populist movements portray society as divided between “the people” and “the elites” and often seek to relax institutional constraints. This paper examines how right- and left-wing populism relate to human freedom, measured by the Human Freedom Index. Our main contribution is to study populism as a legislative phenomenon and to show that its institutional associations depend on ideological alignment within legislatures. Using panel data for 76 dem…

  • Globalisation and political trust: Evidence of a nuanced relationship

    Open AccessJacek Lewkowicz, Jan Fałkowski et al.ARTICLEEuropean Journal of Political…2026

  • Coups and constitutional change

    Open AccessChristian Bjørnskov, Stefan VoigtARTICLEPublic Choice2025Cited by: 2References: 37

    Successful coup plotters come to power by disregarding the constraints of their country’s constitution. Yet, 42% of them initiate the writing of a new constitution within three years after their coup. In this paper, we ask under which conditions coup-plotters are particularly likely to instigate a new constitution, whether coups staged by members of the military lead to constitutions different from those instigated by civilian plotters, and in wh…

  • Do Blasphemy Restrictions Restrict Terrorism

    Open AccessLasse Skjoldager Eskildsen, Lasse Eskildsen et al.ARTICLETerrorism and Political Violence2025

    Although several countries have repealed their laws banning blasphemy in recent years, a majority of the world’s countries still ban some forms of blasphemous expressions. It is often argued in political debate that such legislation is necessary to prevent conflicts and terrorism. The empirical literature on the topic nevertheless remains tiny and it is an open question if blasphemy bans ‘work’ in this way. In this paper, we therefore explore the…

  • State of Emergency: An Economic Analysis

    Open AccessChristian Bjørnskov, Stefan VoigtBOOKState of Emergency2024

    Nine out of ten constitutions contain explicit emergency provisions. During the pandemic, half of the governments with such constitutions has made use of these provisions by declaring a state of emergency. State of Emergency is the first book to analyse the factors that lead to such provisions being included in newly drafted constitutions. It explores their use – as well as their misuse – and explains the effects that using emergency provisions h…

  • Economic freedom and the greenhouse gas Kuznets curve

    Open AccessChristian BjørnskovARTICLEEuropean Journal of Political…2024

    If and how economic freedom is associated with environmental damage remains an open question. In this paper, I therefore combine data on greenhouse gas emissions and GDP per capita with the Economic Freedom of the World indices to test if economic freedom affects emissions. I do so in the context of estimating a standard Environmental Kuznets Curve in which economic freedom can both reduce overall levels as well as shift the shape of the curve. T…

  • Institutions as predictors of government discrimination

    Open AccessNiclas Berggren, Christian BjørnskovARTICLEKyklos2024

    Exclusion of some groups caused by the misuse of government power remains a major problem across the world. We propose that market‐oriented institutions and policies have the capacity to reduce such exclusion. To test this, we use an overall measure derived from the V‐Dem dataset, capturing government discrimination based on political group, social group, socio‐economic group, and gender, which we combine with the Fraser Institute's Economic Free…

  • Does the electoral process cause less terrorism

    Open AccessChristian Bjørnskov, Lasse Skjoldager Eskildsen et al.ARTICLEConstitutional Political Economy2024References: 21

  • Geography, development, and power: Parliament leaders and local clientelism

    Open AccessJohn Cruzatti C, Christian Bjørnskov et al.ARTICLEWorld Development2024References: 26

    While formal institutions are considered rather stable in Western countries, the same cannot be said of those in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). In LAC, these institutions are superseded by nonformalized but deeply embedded practices—especially of political favoritism. Accordingly, this paper explores how members of parliament in LAC favor their birth regions by providing clientelistic goods and services to their constituents. The paper sh…

  • Does legal freedom satisfy

    Open AccessNiclas Berggren, Christian BjørnskovARTICLEEuropean Journal of Law and…2023

    Much political conflict in the world revolves around the issue of how much freedom to accord people. Liberal democracies are characterized by, e.g., the rule of law and a strong protection of civil rights, giving individuals a great deal of legally guaranteed freedom to lead their lives as they see fit. However, it is not known whether legal freedom suffices to make people satisfied with freedom. Our study explores that issue by relating seven in…

  • Press freedom, market information, and international trade

    Open AccessChristian Bjørnskov, Philipp J H SchröderARTICLEEuropean Journal of Political…2023

    We consider a framework in which freedom of the media can alleviate barriers to trade, while in the absence of trustworthy market information, firms optimally withhold part of their export activity and opt for testing-the-waters strategies. We employ data on export flows among a large group of Western and Latin American countries combined with the Freedom House measure of press freedom to examine the main theoretical implication. In a standard se…

  • This time is different?—on the use of emergency measures during the corona pandemic

    Open AccessChristian Bjørnskov, Stefan VoigtARTICLEEuropean Journal of Law and…2022

    The COVID-19 pandemic has not only caused millions to die and even more to lose their jobs, it has also prompted more governments to simultaneously declare a state of emergency than ever before enabling us to compare their decisions more directly. States of emergency usually imply the extension of executive powers that diminishes the powers of other branches of government, as well as to the civil liberties of individuals. Here, we analyze the use…

  • Unconstitutional States of Emergency

    Open AccessChristian Bjørnskov, Stefan Voigt et al.ARTICLEThe Journal of Legal Studies2022

    Nine of 10 modern constitutions contain explicit emergency provisions describing who can declare a state of emergency (and under what conditions) and the additional powers the government enjoys under a state of emergency. As states of emergency typically allocate additional powers to the executive, they lend themselves easily to abuse and provide political incentives to declare emergencies. In this paper, we analyze the conditions under which gov…

  • Political institutions and academic freedom: Evidence from across the world

    Open AccessNiclas Berggren, Christian BjørnskovARTICLEPublic Choice2022Cited by: 7References: 36

    There is scant systematic empirical evidence on what explains variation in academic freedom. Making use of a new indicator and panel data covering 64 countries 1960–2017, we investigate how de facto academic freedom is affected by, in particular, political institutions. We find that moving to electoral democracy is positive, as is moving to electoral autocracy from other autocratic systems, suggesting the importance of elections. Communism has a …

  • Emergencies: On the misuse of government powers

    Open AccessChristian Bjørnskov, Stefan VoigtARTICLEPublic Choice2022Cited by: 7References: 22

    Nine out of 10 constitutions contain explicit emergency provisions, intended to help governments cope with extraordinary events that endanger many people or the existence of the state. We ask two questions: (1) does the constitutionalization of emergency provisions help governments to cope with disasters and other extraordinary events? (2) What particular parts of emergency constitutions fare best? We find that the more advantages emergency const…

  • Differences matter: The effect of coup types on physical integrity rights

    Open AccessChristian Bjørnskov, Katharina Gabriela PfaffARTICLEEuropean Journal of Political…2021

    What is the effect of coups d’état on repression? Do ‘bad’ coups against democracies decrease respect for physical integrity rights? Does it make a difference whether a coup d’état is staged by the military or a civilian leader? We argue that the impact of coups on repression varies with regime type as this determines the relative costs of repression and buying political support. Combining updated panel datasets on democracy and coups d’état from…

  • Does economic freedom boost growth for everyone

    Open AccessAndreas Bergh, Christian BjørnskovARTICLEKyklos2021

    While the association between economic freedom and long‐term economic growth has been well documented, the parallel research literature on the distributional consequences of economic freedom is full of conflicting findings. In this paper, we take a step toward reconciling these two bodies of literature by exploring the within‐quintile growth consequences of changes in three separate elements of economic freedom: the size of government, institutio…

  • Is constitutionalized media freedom only window dressing? Evidence from terrorist attacks

    Open AccessChristian Bjørnskov, Stefan VoigtARTICLEPublic Choice2021Cited by: 2References: 33

    Media freedom is often curtailed in the wake of terrorist attacks. In this contribution, we ask whether constitutional provisions that are intended—directly or indirectly—to protect media freedom affect the degree to which press freedom is curtailed after terrorist incidents. We find that neither provisions explicitly protecting media freedom nor provisions that might protect media freedom indirectly (such as those guaranteeing the independence o…

  • Terrorism and emergency constitutions in the Muslim world

    Open AccessChristian Bjørnskov, Stefan VoigtARTICLEJournal of Peace Research2021References: 8

    Previous research has indicated that constitutionalized emergency provisions effectively constrain the behaviour of democratic governments subsequent to terrorist attacks. In this article, we ask if this is also true for autocratic governments. Are non-democratic governments equally subject to constitutionalized constraints regarding their reactions to emergencies and particularly to terrorist attacks? To answer the question, we analyse the behav…

  • Regime types and regime change: A new dataset on democracy, coups, and political institutions

    Open AccessChristian Bjørnskov, Martin RodeARTICLEThe Review of International…2020

    Social scientists have created a variety of datasets in recent years that quantify political regimes, but these often provide little data on phases of regime transitions. Our aim is to contribute to filling this gap, by providing an update and expansion of the Democracy-Dictatorship data by Cheibub et al. ( Public Choice, 143 , 67–101, 2010 ), originally introduced by Alvarez et al. ( Studies in Comparative International Development, 31 (2), 3–36…

  • Migrants and Life Satisfaction: The Role of the Country of Origin and the Country of Residence

    Open AccessNiclas Berggren, Andreas Bergh et al.ARTICLEKyklos2020

    We investigate how the life satisfaction of migrants is affected by life satisfaction in their background country and in their new country of residence. In particular, we contribute to the literature by differentiating between first‐ and second‐generation immigrants and by differentiating between types of background country. Using data from the European Social Survey on 30,000 immigrants from 200 countries in 32 European countries, we find that f…

  • Constitutional power concentration and corruption: Evidence from Latin America and the Caribbean

    Open AccessAndrea Sáenz de Viteri, Andrea Sáenz de Viteri Vázquez et al.ARTICLEConstitutional Political Economy2020Cited by: 4References: 12

    Just as its constitutional development is characterised by frequent change and substantial concentration of power, the Latin American and the Caribbean area is known to host some of the most corrupt countries of the world. A group of countries such as Chile, Barbados and Uruguay, however, report levels of corruption similar to those displayed by most European countries. We ask whether the concentration of power in the executive, as well as in the…