Popular versus elite democracies and human rights: Inclusion makes a difference

• Main Authors: JOSHI, Devin K., MALOY, J. S., PETERSON, Timothy M.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2019
• Subjects: democracy; electoral system; elite politics; human rights; political conflict; Human Rights Law; Political Science
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2849; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4106/viewcontent/Popular_v_elite_democracies_sv.pdf; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4106/filename/0/type/additional/viewcontent/Pop_elite_supplemental_file.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Scholarly research generally finds that democratic governments are more likely to respect human rights than other types of regimes. Different human rights practices among long-standing and affluent democracies therefore present a puzzle. Drawing from democratic theory and comparative institutional studies, we argue more inclusive or "popular" democracies should enforce human rights better than more exclusive or "elite" democracies, even in the face of security threats from armed conflict. Instead of relying on the Freedom House or Polity indexes to distinguish levels of democracy, we adopt a more focused approach to measuring structures of inclusion, the Institutional Democracy Index (IDI), which captures meaningful differences in how electoral and other institutions channel popular influence over policy-making. Analyzing levels of physical integrity rights through a time-series cross-sectional research design of forty-nine established democracies, supplemented by structured case comparisons, reveals a significant and robust relationship between more inclusive democratic institutions and better respect for human rights.