![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between per capita income and democracy. Namely, do increases in income per capita affect a regime’s level of democracy? The scholarly tradition has investigated this question over many years, and what we have learned about the actual association between these variables remains inconclusive. As opposed to producing yet another empirical analysis of this hypothesized relationship, this article sets forth to examine it via a new methodological approach. Applying the tools of meta-regression analysis to 33 individual empirical studies that investigate the relationship between income and democracy, this article finds that income has no statistically significant, quantitatively meaningful effect on democracy (understanding the latter as a graded concept). I also show that there is no theoretical or empirical reason to believe that this field of research is “haunted” by publication selection bias. Moreover, I identify a variety of systematic differences between these studies, that is, study heterogeneity, which explain why it is the case that after 60 years of research we still have not reached a consensus.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Michael E. Alvarez, Ass. Prof., UoB for insightful comments. I also want to thank the anonymous reviewers for useful suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Note on contributor
Troy Saghaug Broderstad is a PhD student in the Department of Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen.
Notes
1 Acemoglu et al., “Income and Democracy”; Coppedge, Democratization and Research Methods.
2 Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy.”
3 Teorell, Determinants of Democratization.
4 Doucouliagos and Stanley, “Are All Economic Facts Greatly Exaggerated?”
5 Acemoglu et al., “Income and Democracy”; Bobba and Coviello, “Weak Instruments and Weak Identification in Estimating the Effects of Education on Democracy”; Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy”; Barro, “Determinants of Democracy.”
6 Boix, “Democracy, Development, and the International System”; Przeworski et al., Democracy and Development; Teorell, Determinants of Democratization.
7 Acemoglu et al., “Income and Democracy”; Boix, “Democracy, Development, and the International System.”
8 Coppedge, Research Methods and Democratization; Hadenius, Democracy and Development.
9 Ross, Oil and Democracy Revisited; Acemoglu et al., “From Education to Democracy?”; BenYishay and Betancourt, “Civil Liberties and Economic Development.”
10 Teorell, Determinants of Democratization.
11 Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy.”
12 Lipset, Political Man, 31.
13 Aldrich and Cnudde, “Probing the Bounds of Conventional Wisdom”.
14 Coleman and Almond, Conclusion.
15 Cutright, “National Political Development”; Adelman and Morris, “A Factor Analysis”; Jackman, “On the Relation of Economic Development and Democratic Performance.”
16 Hadenius, Democracy and Development, 80.
17 Ibid., 90.
18 Boix and Stokes, “Endogenous Democratization.”
19 Hadenius and Teorell, “Cultural and Economic Prerequisites of Democracy.”
20 Coppedge, Democratization and Research Methods.
21 Boix and Stokes, “Endogenous Democratization.”
22 Bobba and Coviello, “Weak Instruments and Weak Identification in Estimating the Effects of Education on Democracy.”
23 See Arellano and Bond, “Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data”; and Arellano and Bover, “Another Look at the Instrumental Variable Estimation of Error-components Models,” for dicsussion.
24 Murtin and Wacziarg, “The Democratic Transition.”
25 Przeworski et al., Democracy and Development.
26 Ibid., 80.
27 Teorell, Determinants of Democratization.
28 Persson and Tabellini, “Democratic Capital.”
29 Robinson, “Economic Development and Democracy.”
30 Ibid., 524.
31 Acemoglu et al., “From Education to Democracy?”
32 This study’s main objective is to survey the existing literature on income and democracy. I am only interested in whether the studies included in the analysis took account for endogeneity, not whether this question has an inherent endogeneity problem.
33 Acemoglu et al., “From Education to Democracy?”
34 Bollen and Jackman, “Income Inequality and Democratization Revisited.”
35 Acemoglu et al., “Income and Democracy.”
36 Acemoglu et al., “Reevaluating the Modernization Hypothesis.”
37 This technique has been criticized on several points: The most frequent might be that it compares apples and oranges, but also that “garbage in” produces “garbage out”. As the following discussion will show, I argue that this is not that case in this analysis.
38 Doucouliagos and Stanley, “Are all Economic Facts Greatly Exaggerated?” This timespan was a result of the data collection procedure. The earliest econometric study that included all the measures needed for the calculations of the dependent variable was Barro, “Determinants of Democracy.”
39 Stanley and Doucouliagos, Meta-Regression Analysis in Economics and Business.
40 Cohen, “Statistical Power Analysis.”
41 Stanley and Doucouliagos, Meta-Regression Analysis in Economics and Business.
42 Stanley, “Meta-regression Methods for Detecting and Estimating Empirical Effects in the Presence of Publication Selection.”
43 Ibid.; Stanley, “Beyond Publication Bias.”
44 Stanley and Doucouliagos, Meta-Regression Analysis in Economics and Business; Doucouliagos and Stanley, “Publication Selection Bias in Minimum-Wage Research?”
45 Stanley and Doucouliagos, Meta-Regression Analysis in Economics and Business.
46 Ibid.
47 Stanley and Doucouliagos, Meta-Regression Analysis in Economics and Business, 320.
48 Egger et al., “Bias in the Meta-analysis Detected by a Simple, Graphical Test.”
49 Stanley and Doucouliagos, Meta-Regression Analysis in Economics and Business.
50 Acemoglu et al., “Income and Democracy.”
51 Moral-Benito and Bartolucci, “Income and Democracy.”
52 Che et al., “The Impact of Income on Democracy Revisited.”
53 Heid, Langer, and Larch, “Income and Democracy.”
54 Boix and Stokes, “Endogenous Democratization.”
55 Acemoglu et al., “Income and Democracy.”
56 The reason for the pre/post operationalization chosen is that most studies look at the income-democracy nexus studies post-1950. The studies that look at long-term effects use data from the 1800s to 2000s. The point here is to check for systematic differences between studies that focus on post-1950 contra pre-1950. I do not claim that there is no long-term effect on democracy.
57 Stanley and Doucouliagos, Meta-Regression Analysis in Economics and Business.
58 Acemoglu et al., “Reevaluating the Modernization Hypothesis.”
59 Munck and Verkuilen, “Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy.”
60 Krieckhaus, “The Regime Debate Revisted.”
61 Ahmadov, “Oil, Democracy, and Context.”
62 Ibid.
63 Acemoglu et al. “From Education to Democracy?”
64 Glaeser et al., “Why Does Democracy Need Education?”
65 Acemoglu et al., “Income and Democracy.”
66 Heid, Langer, and Larch, “Income and Democracy.”
67 Högström, “Does the Choice of Democracy Measure Matter?”
68 Werger, “Effect of Oil and Diamonds on Democracy?”
69 Coppedge and Midlarsky, “Modernization and Thresholds of Democracy.”
70 Dahl, Polyarchy.
71 Stanley et al., Meta-Analysis of Economics Research Network.
72 Przeworski et al., Democracy and Development.
73 Boix and Stokes, “Endogenous Democratization.”