(iPoster) Make Democracy Pro Worker Again!

• In Event: Poster Session: Democracy and Autocracy II & Health Politics and Health Policy
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Democracy and Autocracy II

Abstract

Democracy is in crisis because it has failed to alleviate the most pressing needs of the population. Extremist parties and unconstrained rulers constantly and openly threaten some fundamental principles – such as tolerance and solidarity – that raise our modern political systems. Recent elections in Europe and the U.S. demonstrate that these leaders are supported by important segments of the population, such as the working class. This issue raises the question on whether democracy has failed to improve the living conditions for workers around the world, or if the phenomenon is contained in a bunch of industrialized and wealthy countries facing different challenges that their underdeveloped counterparts. I argue that democracy does indeed increase the material well-being of workers, but this relationship is mediated by several factors such as worker’s vulnerability to globalization, economic development, the strength of labor unions, electoral rules and partisan politics. I test these arguments using both matching and an instrumental variable approach based on exploiting waves of political diffusion as exogenous variation to country-specific levels of democracy.

Author

• Erick Alvarez Barreno, University of Bergen