Kinder democracies? Consensus versus majoritarian and poverty reduction

Lijphart’s basic argument is that there are two major types of democracies – majoritarian democracies, based upon the Westminster model, and consensus democracies, to be found in Europe. He claims that consensus democracies provide better outcomes for people on a variety of indicators. I decided to try our one indicator, not mentioned in Patterns of Democracy [1] – poverty reduction.

Using data from the Luxembourg Income Study [2], and plotting the executive-parties dimension of democracies from Lijphart’s Patterns of Democracy produces the following graph:

My poor grasp of statistical tests tells me that scoring higher on Lijphart’s first dimension is positively correlated with effective poverty reduction at the 5% level, and that’s with the United States as a huge outlier.

* Relative effectiveness of income redistribution systems in poverty reduction around 1990, where poverty threshold = 60 per cent of median equivalent disposable income.

Make of that what you will.

[1]  Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 1999).

[2]  J. Fritzell and V. M. Ritakallio, “Societal shifts and changed patterns of poverty,” Luxembourg Income Study working paper 393 (2004).

Update: Replaced Excel graphs with plots from R.