Efeitos de indicadores socioeconômicos sobre a qualidade de instituições políticas participativas: um estudo utilizando um painel de países no período de 1960 a 2018

Abstract

The theory of democratization by redistribution proposed by Acemoglu and Robinson (2000, 2001, 2006) predicts that the probability of instability of political regimes is greater in periods associated with greater inequality, this hypothesis is critical to the literature that defends a positive relationship between the per capita income and the probability of democratization, highlighted, Lipset (1959) and its modernization trend. In this dissertation, we focus on the discussions of Acemoglu and Robinson (2000, 2001, 2006), which has a close relationship with North's institutional theory (1994), and we have as a general objective to analyze the relationship between socioeconomic inequality and quality of participatory political institutions, and specific objectives: (i) to analyze the theory of democratization by redistribution, aiming at the role of inequality in its dynamics; and (ii) empirically verify the effects of socioeconomic measures on the quality of participatory political institutions. The main econometric method used is the system generalized method of moments (ARELLANO; BOVER, 1995 and BLUNDELL; BOND, 1998) in a sample of 160 countries from 1960 to 2018. We highlight as the main result that the infant mortality rate, used as a health proxy, it had a negative and significant effect on the quality of participatory political institutions in most estimates, even in robustness tests, and in particular, in a subsample of countries with political regime instability, which may indicate that wide inequalities and inequalities, as suggested by Sen (1999) and Deaton (2002, 2003), perceived by citizens can contribute to the consolidation and qualities of democratic regimes.