Why is the World Short of Democracy? A Cross-Country Ananlysis of Barriers to Representative Government

Abstract

This study first uses a set of graphs and tables to present the pattern of democracy in the world, using the Gastil Index. Then a statistical analysis is conducted by two techniques: Regression techniques are used to analyze the effect on democracy of a handful of variables. It shows that poverty, Communism and the Muslim culture are the main barriers to democracy. It then uses Bayesian probability methods to make explicit the concept of the “risk” of countries being ndemocratic. The analysis focuses on the dynamics of the income effect and of the democratic deficit of the Muslim countries to see if it is stationary or transitory. It is unstable, so it may be transitory, but it has been rising.Democracy, Lipset’s law, Western vs Muslim Culture