Abstract
This paper investigates to what extent and under what conditions democracy and state capacity affect human development. We argue that democratic institutions provide leaders with incentives for improving human development, whereas capable state apparatuses enable them to do so. Accordingly, we argue that the two factors reinforce the effects of each other and that the highest levels of human development are achieved when high levels of both factors are present. Our argument contradicts earlier studies, which have claimed that the effects of the two factors crowd out one another. We investigate the proposition through time-series cross-sectional analyses, employing new and improved measures of both democracy and state capacity. These new measures not only give our analysis an advantage in terms of measurement validity; they also substantially increase its temporal scope compared to previous studies. Consequently, we analyze a global sample of countries spanning the period 1902–2008. The results provide strong support for our theoretical expectations, and they are robust to both alternative measures and different model specifications. Our results highlight the importance of building capable state structures and democracy in conjunction and have significant implications for scholars and practitioners of development policy.
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Notes
See Ross (2006) for contrasting findings.
See also Slater and Fenner (2011).
Knutsen (2013) also finds a negative interaction effect for democracy and state capacity, but for economic growth instead of human development.
Actually, both Hanson and Knutsen briefly acknowledge that a positive interaction effect between democracy and state capacity could be theoretically plausible. However, both go on to argue against it and in favor of the negative interaction effect instead.
The number of countries and the period investigated vary between models depending on the lags applied.
It is not clear whether this implies meritocratic recruitment.
See Hendrix (2010) for a similar conclusion regarding BQ.
Two-way fixed-effects models use the within information on two dimensions at once.
These are specified as AR(1).
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Acknowledgements
We want to thank the editors and reviewers for valuable feedback on the article. We also want to express our gratitude to the members of the Comparative Politics and International Relations research sections at Aarhus University for insightful comments and suggestions. We are especially grateful to Svend-Erik Skaaning and David Andersen for meticulous feedback on several versions of the article. Lastly, we want to say a big thank you to David Vestergård Ulrichsen for his involvement and important contributions at an early stage of the project.
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Appendix
Appendix
Development in infant mortality rate and secondary school enrollment over time. Scatterplots with Lowess curves
Development in democracy and administrative capacity over time. Scatterplots with Lowess curves
Percentage distribution of state capacity at different levels of democracy. No. 1 is upper left panel, no. 2 is upper right panel, no. 3 is lower left panel, and no. 4 is lower right panel
Marginal effect of democratic stock (5% depreciation rate) on infant mortality rate at different levels of administrative capacity. Based on the results from model 6, Table 2. The solid line is the marginal effect of democratic stock, and the dotted lines indicate 95% confidence intervals. The gray columns represent the distribution of observations. The figure shows the observed range
Marginal effect of administrative capacity on infant mortality rate at different levels of democratic stock (5% depreciation rate). Based on the results from model 6, Table 2. The solid line is the marginal effect of administrative capacity, and the dotted lines indicate 95% confidence intervals. The gray columns represent the distribution of observations. The figure shows the observed range
Marginal effect of regime type on secondary school enrollment at different levels of administrative capacity. Based on the results from model 10, Table 3. The solid line is the marginal effect of democracy, and the dotted lines indicate 95% confidence intervals. The gray columns represent the distribution of observations. The figure shows the observed range
Marginal effect of administrative capacity on secondary school enrollment at different levels of democracy. Based on the results from model 10, Table 3. The solid line is the marginal effect of administrative capacity, and the dotted lines indicate 95% confidence intervals. The gray columns represent the distribution of observations. The figure shows the observed range
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Grundholm, A.T., Thorsen, M. Motivated and Able to Make a Difference? The Reinforcing Effects of Democracy and State Capacity on Human Development. St Comp Int Dev 54, 381–414 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-019-09285-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-019-09285-2