Is Democracy Good for the Poor?

Ross, Michael. "Is Democracy Good for the Poor?" American Journal of Political Science 50, no. 4 (2006): 860-74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4122920.

This article by Michael L. Ross, a professor of Political Science at the University of California, discusses the relationship between regimes types, and the welfare of the poor. The focus of Michael's work is on the impact that regime type has on child and infant mortality rates across the world. The article notes the flaws of previous research, and discusses at length the methods and controls which he personally employed in order to reach his own conclusion; that regime type has an insignificant impact on child and infant mortality rates.

Noting that infant and child mortality rates are perhaps the best representation of the welfare of the poor - due to low income families having the highest rates of such occurrences, Ross selects this factor to be the most accurate way to measure welfare amongst poor communities. Ross acknowledges that democratic regimes tend to have higher welfare budgets than non-democratic regimes, however, notes that this does not necessarily correspond to improved welfare for people with low-incomes, and subsequently does not imply that 'democracy' leads to a drop in mortality rates of children and infants.

Why Are Democracies Thought to Improve Welfare Amongst the Poor?

In this article, Ross mentions three common theories which have been used in political science to explain why democratic states should in theory improve welfare amongst the poor more significantly than non-democratic regimes.

Theory 1:

The first of these theories is the nature of the voting systems in democracies. In democracies, the leaders require the support of the people. If the government is failing to address the welfare problems of the poor, they are likely to lose votes, and therefore, it is in the interest of politicians to provide quality welfare for the poor in order to be voted into power. In non-democratic states, this pressure from the population does not exist. Leaders in authoritarian regimes do not require the approval or vote of the people; and so it is often concluded that democratic regimes are likely to provide more social welfare to their populations than non-democratic regimes.

Theory 2:

Democracies allow freedom of press, which is non-existent in most non-democratic regimes. With freedom of press, comes the ability for welfare problems of even the most remote, poor areas to reach the central government. It allows the concerns of the people to be heard, and then acted upon. Ross notes that even if both democracies and non-democracies had the same interest in improving welfare (in the case of the article, it discusses avoiding famine), that due to freedom of press, democratic states are more likely to become aware of welfare issues and are consequently in a better position to act when required.

Theory 3:

In general, democratic states spend more on welfare, and experience more redistribution of capital because they have to please more people, whilst in non-democratic states, often there is more of a focus on the elites and upper class, and the lower class is not often cared for or catered to economically.

Limitations of Previous Research

Many studies in the past have claimed to 'prove' that democracies decrease infant and child mortality rates, however Ross identifies three main problems which these studies fail to account for:

1. Country specific effects such as culture and geography which could impact on child/infant mortality rates, regardless of the state's political regime type.
2. Global health trends. If health is improving worldwide, it is illogical to conclude that an improvement in mortality rates is due to a change in political system.
3. Data bias. Many past studies use smaller data sets which are not representative of worldwide patterns. Often they fail to include non-democratic regimes with low child/infant mortality rates, and this can misrepresent the truth leading to the incorrect conclusion that democracy leads to decreased mortality rates amongst children and infants. Interestingly, Ross identifies the reasons why some data is excluded from past studies. Democratic states more likely to record such data in order to impress the population, while non-democratic states do not necessarily feel obliged to share information of this nature. In addition to this, authoritarian regimes only experience international pressure to record child and infant mortality rates when they are struggling; “hence fewer data would be available for high-performing authoritarian states than low performing ones”.

Improving the Accuracy of Research

To address the issues of past research, Ross conducts his own research with a dataset of all 168 sovereign states which existed between 1970-2000, with a population of over 200,000. To address the missing data, he calculates estimated values and create two reports, one including the estimates and one excluding it. His research also takes into account the amount of years a country has been democratic, and uses control variables such as income per capita, population density, economic growth, and the impact of HIV/AIDS on the poor.

Results

Ross's research showed that a switch from total authoritarianism to total democracy only saw child and infant mortality rates drop by 0.2 deaths per thousand, per year. While other factors such as medical advancements and education lead to an average decrease of two whole deaths per thousand, per year - 10 times the rate that democratisation caused. This shows that overall, democracy as a factor, had very little effect on mortality rates.

Why Doesn't an Increase in Welfare Expenditure Lead to Improved Welfare of The Poor?

Ross concludes that the reason why democracies do not experience significantly lower infant and child mortality rates than non-democracies, despite having higher welfare budgets, is that such a change would require a major focus on low income households. Medium-income families are already likely to provide their children with the medical support they need (since they don't face economic barriers), and therefore, government funding and support in such areas does not impact the mortality rates, since these children were already receiving this care. The only way that mortality rates would be affected would be if democracies were specifically favouring low-income families who cannot already access healthcare. Most democratic redistribution of capital currently focuses on the median voter, and therefore, "poor children did not receive a larger share of public health benefits in democracies than they did in non democracies”.

In Conclusion

Ross clearly identifies faults in existing research which exists in regards to the correlation between regime types and welfare among the poor. While he conducts thorough research himself, which solves the problems of other research, there are still many variables which contribute to welfare, and arguably, not all of these variables can be accounted for; and as a result, it is possible that no entirely accurate conclusion can be reached. However, this is perhaps the purpose of Ross' research - to demonstrate that there is no obvious causal relationship between the two factors, and that the welfare of low income communities is reliant on an array of factors, such as medical knowledge at the time, cultural practices, geographic location and predisposition to disease. The main aspect of Ross’ own research which raises concerns is the implementation of ‘estimates’ for data which does not exist. While of course these estimates are calculated using reputable methods, they are never going to be completely accurate, however, there is no doubt that including estimates of such data produces more accurate results than carrying out research based on data from only a selection of countries.

Ross' journal article is entirely relevant to our course, especially our Regime Classification Exercise, which has a focus on human rights in democracies versus non-democracies. In our research, attempting to determine whether or not non-democracies are more likely to violate human rights, we will experience similar obstacles to the research Ross mentions, as there are many variables which affect human rights violations, and in order to reach valid conclusions, factors such as cultural norms must be taken into account. This article has brought attention to the importance of differentiating between causation and correlation when conducting research.