How Do Economic Conditions Influence Support for Democracy?

Puspa D. Amri
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Abstract

Abundant political economy work has found that societies tend to be less supportive of the political system that governs their country when the economy deteriorates. This paper seeks to enrich the existing literature on economic and democratic assessments by including the relatively under-explored group of developing countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, many of which are Muslim countries. Using public opinion data from the World Values Survey of 78 countries from 2005 to 2020, the author applies multi-level regressions to test whether the relationship between democratic support and economic growth varies along three dimensions: country affluence, MENA versus non-MENA regions, and type of political regime. Consistent with past studies, the findings in this paper confirm that higher real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth significantly enhances public support for democracy. However, it also identifies that the more robustly significant predictors of public support for democracy are political variables, particularly evaluation of government performance. The interaction variables analysis reveals that the effects of economic growth on public support for democracy is weaker in the presence of higher country affluence as well as in more liberal democracies, while being located in the MENA region strengthens the relationship between economic growth and public support for democracy. In addition, respondents who consider free and fair elections as well as protection of civil liberties to be essential features of democracy tend to be more supportive of democracy itself. Meanwhile, those who associate democracy with redistributive policies tend to have a more negative assessment of democracy.
经济状况如何影响对民主的支持?
大量的政治经济学研究发现,当经济恶化时,社会往往不太支持治理国家的政治制度。本文试图通过纳入中东和北非(MENA)地区相对未被充分探索的发展中国家群体(其中许多是穆斯林国家)来丰富现有的经济和民主评估文献。作者利用2005年至2020年78个国家的世界价值观调查的民意数据,运用多层次回归来检验民主支持与经济增长之间的关系是否在三个维度上发生变化:国家富裕程度、中东和北非地区与非中东和北非地区以及政治制度类型。与过去的研究一致,本文的研究结果证实,较高的人均实际国内生产总值(GDP)增长显著增强了公众对民主的支持。然而,它也指出,公众支持民主的更强有力的重要预测因素是政治变量,特别是对政府绩效的评估。相互作用变量分析显示,在国家富裕程度较高和民主自由程度较高的情况下,经济增长对公众支持民主的影响较弱,而位于中东和北非地区的国家则加强了经济增长与公众支持民主之间的关系。此外,认为自由公正的选举以及保护公民自由是民主的基本特征的受访者往往更支持民主本身。与此同时,那些将民主与再分配政策联系在一起的人往往对民主持更为负面的评价。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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