Determinants of Democracy

Robert Barro

Scholarly Articles from Harvard University Department of Economics

Abstract: A panel study of over 100 countries from 1960 to 1995 finds that improvements in the standard of living predict increase in democracy, as measured by a subjective indicator of electoral rights. The propensity for democracy rises with per capita GDP, primary schooling, and a smaller gap between male and female primary attainment. For a given standard of living, democaracy tends to fall with urbnization and with a greater reliance on natrual resources. Democracy has little relation to country size but rises with the middle†class share of income. The apparently strong relation of democracy to colonial heritage mostly disappears when the economic variables are held constant. Similarly, the allowance for these economic variables weakens the interplay between democracy and religious affiliation. However, negative effects from Muslim and non†religious affiliations remain intact.

Date: 1999
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (667)

Published in Journal of Political Economy -Chicago-

Downloads: (external link)
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3451297 ... minantsDemocracy.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Determinants of Democracy (1999)
Working Paper: DETERMINANTS OF DEMOCRACY (1997)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hrv:faseco:3451297

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Scholarly Articles from Harvard University Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Office for Scholarly Communication ().