Ethnic Diversity, Democracy, and Health: Theory and Evidence

Go Kotera (), Nobuhiro Mizuno, Keisuke Okada () and Sovannroeun Samreth
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Go Kotera: Institute of Economic Research, Kyoto University
Keisuke Okada: Graduate School of Economics, Kyoto University,

No 790, KIER Working Papers from Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research

Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between ethnic composition, political regimes, and the quality of public policy. Specifically, based on the citizen-candidate model, we assume individuals who have heterogeneous policy preferences and investigate how ethnic diversity affects selection of a politician and the resulting policy choices in democratic and dictatorial regimes. In the theoretical analysis, our model derives (1) a negative relationship between ethnic diversity and the quality of public policy, both in a democracy with a dominant group and in a dictatorship, and (2) a non-monotonic relationship in a democracy without a dominant group. In the empirical examination, using health outcomes as the proxy for the quality of public policy, our theoretical results are supported by evidence from the data of 154 countries.

Keywords: Citizen-candidate model; Ethnic fractionalization; Infant mortality. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-dem and nep-pol
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Journal Article: Ethnic diversity, democracy, and health: Theory and evidence (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kyo:wpaper:790

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