IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v111y2017i01p68-82_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Democracy at Work: Moving Beyond Elections to Improve Well-Being

Author

Listed:
  • TOUCHTON, MICHAEL
  • SUGIYAMA, NATASHA BORGES
  • WAMPLER, BRIAN

Abstract

How does democracy work to improve well-being? In this article, we disentangle the component parts of democratic practice—elections, civic participation, expansion of social provisioning, local administrative capacity—to identify their relationship with well-being. We draw from the citizenship debates to argue that democratic practices allow citizens to gain access to a wide range of rights, which then serve as the foundation for improving social well-being. Our analysis of an original dataset covering over 5,550 Brazilian municipalities from 2006 to 2013 demonstrates that competitive elections alone do not explain variation in infant mortality rates, one outcome associated with well-being. We move beyond elections to show how participatory institutions, social programs, and local state capacity can interact to buttress one another and reduce infant mortality rates. It is important to note that these relationships are independent of local economic growth, which also influences infant mortality. The result of our thorough analysis offers a new understanding of how different aspects of democracy work together to improve a key feature of human development.

Suggested Citation

  • Touchton, Michael & Sugiyama, Natasha Borges & Wampler, Brian, 2017. "Democracy at Work: Moving Beyond Elections to Improve Well-Being," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 111(1), pages 68-82, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:111:y:2017:i:01:p:68-82_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S000305541600068X/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hofer, Katrin & Wicki, Michael & Kaufmann, David, 2024. "Public support for participation in local development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    2. Gabriele Prati, 2022. "The Association between Subjective Well-being and Regime Type across 78 countries: the moderating role of Political Trust," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 17(6), pages 3393-3413, December.
    3. Burger,Martijn & Hendriks,Martijn & Ianchovichina,Elena, 2022. "Anatomy of Brazil’s Subjective Well-Being : A Tale of Growing Discontent and Polarization in the 2010s," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9924, The World Bank.
    4. Ermini, Barbara & Santolini, Raffaella & Ciommi, Mariateresa, 2023. "Equitable and sustainable well-being in Italian municipalities: Do women in politics make the difference?," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    5. Schreiner, Nicolas, 2021. "Changes in Well-Being Around Elections," Working papers 2021/03, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:111:y:2017:i:01:p:68-82_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.