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Why democracy matters: democratic attributes and human well-being

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Abstract

Large disparities exist in the quality of lives among democratic and non-democratic regimes. This paper attempts to explain this variation among democratic regimes by unpacking the concept of democracy and analysing the effect of three core democratic attributes — political representation, citizens’ participation, and electoral competition — on human well-being outcomes. I argue that higher levels of representation, participation, and competition provide incentives for political representatives to perform well in office and enhance the general welfare of the masses. A time-series cross-sectional analysis is used on a global sample of 75 democracies to assess the relationship between the theoretical variables of interest from 1995 to 2013. The findings demonstrate that electoral competition plays an important role in reducing infant mortality within as well as between democratic countries while political representation helps explain disparities in infant mortality between democratic countries. Overall, the paper demonstrates that the role of democratic politics in general extends to the domain of societal well-being.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback on the earlier versions of this article. All inadvertent errors remain my own.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Sciences & Cultural Studies, Montana State University – Billings, 1500 University Drive, Billings, MT, 59101, USA

    Nisha Mukherjee Bellinger

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  1. Nisha Mukherjee Bellinger
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Correspondence to Nisha Mukherjee Bellinger.

Appendices

Appendix A: List of democratic countries included in the analyses

Albania

Algeria

Argentina

Armenia

Bangladesh

Benin

Bolivia

Botswana

Brazil

Bulgaria

Burundi

Cape Verde

Chile

Columbia

Costa Rica

Croatia

Cyprus

Dominican Republic

East Timor

El Salvador

Estonia

Georgia

Ghana

Greece

Guatemala

Guinea-Bissau

Honduras

Hungary

India

Indonesia

Italy

Jamaica

Kenya

Latvia

Lesotho

Lithuania

Macedonia

Madagascar

Malawi

Malaysia

Mauritius

Mexico

Moldova

Mongolia

Mozambique

Namibia

Nepal

Nicaragua

Niger

Nigeria

Pakistan

Panama

Papua New Guinea

Paraguay

Peru

Philippines

Poland

Portugal

Romania

Russia

Senegal

Sierra Leone

Slovenia

South Africa

Spain

Sri Lanka

Suriname

Thailand

Trinidad and Tobago

Turkey

Ukraine

Uruguay

Venezuela

Zambia

Appendix B: Descriptive statistics

Variable

Obs

Mean

SD

Min

Max

Infant mortality

795

2.96

0.89

0.83

4.85

Representation

795

0.64

0.14

0.02

0.92

Competition

795

14.46

14.79

0.02

67.42

Participation

795

62.68

14.87

23.88

98.76

Population

795

16.31

1.54

13.01

20.85

Income

795

7.93

1.23

4.94

10.56

Democratic stock

795

19.98

12.97

0

51

Civil conflicts

795

0.56

1.51

0

9

Democracy

795

7.93

1.76

2

10

Democracy squared

795

66.00

26.16

4

100

Inequality

795

40.6

8.50

22.09

65.27

Female literacy

795

4.38

0.34

2.24

4.60

Health spending

795

3.45

1.56

0.62

7.46

Appendix C: Correlation matrix

  

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

1

Infant mortality

1

            

2

Representation

−0.19

1

           

3

Competition

0.25

−0.40

1

          

4

Participation

−0.23

0.02

−0.17

1

         

5

Population

0.21

0.14

−0.02

−0.03

1

        

6

Income

−0.85

0.09

−0.14

0.23

−0.15

1

       

7

Democratic stock

−0.32

−0.11

0.01

0.04

0.03

0.41

1

      

8

Civil conflict

0.18

0.10

0.003

−0.06

0.49

−0.23

0.20

1

     

9

Democracy

−0.51

0.02

−0.28

0.33

−0.27

0.53

0.23

−0.19

1

    

10

Democracy squared

−0.55

0.01

−0.27

0.35

−0.27

0.57

0.24

−0.19

0.99

1

   

11

Inequality

0.52

−0.21

0.34

−0.13

0.14

−0.28

0.17

0.14

−0.27

−0.29

1

  

12

Female literacy

−0.67

0.11

−0.07

0.16

−0.21

0.66

0.27

−0.11

0.38

0.39

−0.13

1

 

13

Health spending

−0.61

0.06

−0.13

0.21

−0.24

0.56

0.10

−0.27

0.47

0.49

−0.31

0.43

1

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Bellinger, N.M. Why democracy matters: democratic attributes and human well-being. J Int Relat Dev 22, 413–440 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-017-0105-1

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