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Is Democracy a Normal Good? Evidence from Democratic Movements

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  • Jenny A. Minier

Abstract

A frequent assertion of economists and political scientists is that democracy is a normal good, or that higher incomes lead citizens to “desire” more democracy. This assertion, however, has been difficult to test directly. I introduce a data set of democratic movements, and use it to address the relationship between income and the demand for democracy. Logit analysis of the estimated probability that a democratic movement occurs in an authoritarian country suggests that this probability is increasing in income per capita up to a level of approximately $5000. Unlike previous results, this does not suggest that all countries will become democratic once they pass some income threshold.

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  • Jenny A. Minier, 2001. "Is Democracy a Normal Good? Evidence from Democratic Movements," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 67(4), pages 996-1009, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:67:y:2001:i:4:p:996-1009
    DOI: 10.1002/j.2325-8012.2001.tb00386.x
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    Cited by:

    1. Linda Chor Wing Yung & Sam Hak-Kan Tang, 2005. "Does Rapid Economic Growth Accelerate Democratization? Time-Series Evidence from High Performing Asian Economies," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 05-20, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    2. Thomas Apolte, 2011. "Democracy and prosperity in two decades of transition," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 19(4), pages 693-722, October.
    3. Pauline Grosjean & Claudia Senik, 2011. "Democracy, Market Liberalization, and Political Preferences," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(1), pages 365-381, February.
    4. Duha Altindag & Naci Mocan, 2010. "Joblessness and Perceptions about the Effectiveness of Democracy," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 99-123, June.
    5. Akhenaton Izu, 2018. "What is the optimal democratic system ? [Quel est le régime démocratique optimal en Afrique?]," Post-Print hal-01791821, HAL.
    6. Grosjean, Pauline & Senik, Claudia, 2007. "Should Market Liberalization precede Democracy ? Causal Relations between Political Preferences and Development," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) 0704, CEPREMAP.
    7. Möller, Marie, 2011. "Economic voting and economic revolutionizing? The economics of incumbency changes in European democracies and revolutionary events in the Arab World," CIW Discussion Papers 10/2011, University of Münster, Center for Interdisciplinary Economics (CIW).
    8. Helfer, Helena, 2015. "Social market economy: Towards a comprehensive composite index," CIW Discussion Papers 6/2015, University of Münster, Center for Interdisciplinary Economics (CIW).
    9. Libman, Alexander, 2008. "Democracy and growth: is the effect non-linear?," MPRA Paper 17795, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Apolte, Thomas & Peters, Heiko, 2009. "Governance, Demokratie und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung in den ehemals sozialistischen Staaten," IÖB-Diskussionspapiere 1/09, University of Münster, Institute for Economic Education.

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