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Democracy and Quality of Life in Asian Societies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2011

SHINYA SASAOKA  and
KATSUNORI SEKI
SHINYA SASAOKA
Affiliation:
Hiroshima Shudo Universitysasaoka@shudo-u.ac.jp
KATSUNORI SEKI
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Texas A&M Universitykseki@politics.tamu.edu
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Abstract

This article examines whether democracy affects quality of life. Scholars have conducted surveys to investigate whether democracy is likely to lead to good quality of life. There are two contested views to the relationship: some suggest that democracy has a positive causal effect on quality of life, whereas others contend that democracy does not play such a role. Previous findings are supported by cross-national statistical analysis with aggregated survey data. However, aggregated survey data may cause ecological fallacy. Also, in order to ascertain the extant research, it would be beneficial to test the hypothesis by incorporating both individual- and country-level variables. Therefore, this paper applied hierarchical modeling to investigate the regularity. Both individual-level perception of democracy and country-level political regime data were incorporated in our empirical model. Our findings suggest that individual-level satisfaction with democracy has positive causal effect on one's quality of life, whereas the country-level characteristic of the political regime has no effect.

Type
Research Article
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , December 2011 , pp. 343 - 357
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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