Democracy and Human Development

Does democracy improve the quality of life for its citizens? Scholars have long assumed that it does, but recent research has called this orthodoxy into question. This article reviews this body of work, develops a series of causal pathways through which democracy might improve social welfare, and te...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of politics 2012-01, Vol.74 (1), p.1-17
Main Authors: Gerring, John, Thacker, Strom C., Alfaro, Rodrigo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Authoritarianism
Citizens
Countries
Cross-national analysis
Datasets
Democracy
Democratization
Economic models
Human development
Infant Mortality
Institutionalization
Measurement
Political parties
Political regimes
Political theory
Polities
Quality of Life
Statistical analysis
Time series
Welfare
World Bank
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Summary:Does democracy improve the quality of life for its citizens? Scholars have long assumed that it does, but recent research has called this orthodoxy into question. This article reviews this body of work, develops a series of causal pathways through which democracy might improve social welfare, and tests two hypotheses: (a) that a country’s level of democracy in a given year affects its level of human development and (b) that its stock of democracy over the past century affects its level of human development. Using infant mortality rates as a core measure of human development, we conduct a series of time-series—cross-national statistical tests of these two hypotheses. We find only slight evidence for the first proposition, but substantial support for the second. Thus, we argue that the best way to think about the relationship between democracy and development is as a time-dependent, historical phenomenon.
ISSN:0022-3816
1468-2508
DOI:10.1017/S0022381611001113