The Transmission of Democracy: From the Village to the Nation-State We provide evidence that a history of democracy at the local level is associated with contemporary democracy at the national level. Auxiliary estimates show that a tradition of local democracy is also associated with attitudes that favor democracy, with better quality institutions, and higher level of economic development. JEL ...

Democracy is more than just another brake or booster for the economy. We argue that there are significant indirect effects of democracy on growth through public health and education. Where economists use life expectancy and education as proxies for human capital, we expect democracy will be an important determinant of the level of public services manifested in these indicators. In addition to w...

This study is examining the relationship between the rate of religiousity and attitude toward democracy in Nayshabor citizens. To do so, a survey was done in a sample of 295 literate citizens were selected in PPS method. Theoretical framework is selected according to the theories of Lenski, Weber and Cultural wars theory and religiosity measurement is done according to Glock and Stark’s multidi...

Does democracy improve the quality of life for its citizens? Scholars have long assumed that it does, but recent research has called this orthodoxy into question. This article reviews this body of work, develops a series of causal pathways through which democracy might improve social welfare, and tests two hypotheses: (a) that a country’s level of democracy in a given year affects its level of ...

Neighborhood-representing organizations (NROs) are generally viewed as the most authentic form of citizen participation and local democracy. In this article, I question how democratic NROs actually are, both on the local level (participatory democracy) and in the external arena (representative democracy). I present a new conceptual model of the components of democracy in neighborhood organizati...

This paper develops a positive theory of growth and redistribution in which agents care about both their absolute and relative levels of consumption. As in Alesina and Rodrik (1994), public goods are productive and are financed by a tax on capital. Equilibrium tax policy is chosen by a pivotal voter and is shown to reflect the strength of status preferences and the distributions of wealth and p...

T his study investigates the relationship between quality of environment and democracy among different countries over the period of 2002 - 2012. Democracy and accumulated democracy indices have been considered as political inequality variables influencing the quality of the environment among different countries in the reduced form of Kuznets’ environmental curve (EKC) hypotheses mode...

The number of political parties and the type of electoral system may impact the level of democratic functioning within a government. Models are used to explore whether the number of political parties increases a country’s democracy score on the POLITY IV measure of democracy, and whether countries with proportional representation electoral systems have higher democracy scores than those without...

Democracy originated in Greece and has been an ideal way of citizenry coexistence for centuries. History tellers say that Athens, the world’s first democracy, was an extremely high performing organization due to the high level of commitment and engagement of the people. The three pillars of democracy (representation, participation, and deliberation) were then feasible. When a population grows i...