Democratic Governance & Sustainable Human Development
This project is funded by the United Nations Development Programme and examines the relationship between democratic governance and sustainable human development.
Background to the project
In the context of the global economic and other crises, development discourses are being reshaped as international and national financial, economic and political contexts continue to change. The concept of development itself has moved well beyond its original conception based on growth in income to broader concepts of human development.
Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, the idea of governance has also evolved beyond its more technocratic understanding to the idea of democratic governance, with an emphasis on democratic process, which includes such values and principles as inclusion, participation, non-discrimination, accountability and transparency.
In response to these shifts, and as the Rio+20 Conference approaches, the development agenda of the international community is also changing. In short, sustainable human development, with its three pillars of (1) the social, (2) the economic and (3) the environmental, is returning to centre stage as an organizing concept for development.
International discussions of the means through which sustainable human development is to be achieved have included a significant role for democratic governance (DG). The assumption is that more inclusive, participatory, and accountable governance is important for achieving sustainable human development (SHD).
Additionally, while the number of countries usually classified as ‘democratic’ increases, so too does global inequality. Moreover, although the argument is intuitively attractive and widely acknowledged, it is little explored and the robust empirical basis for these assumptions is currently weak.
Some existing statistical analysis has suggested that democracies are better at providing human development (a combined measure of income, literacy and longevity) and better at distributing the benefits of development, measured primarily through income distribution indicators.
It also shows that democracies lower the probability of inter-state conflict, that democracies tend to use less repression in the face of domestic conflict and that they are better at protecting human rights. There is also a positive and significant relationship between income distribution and the protection of civil and political rights, even after controlling for democracy, conflict, ethnic fractionalization, population size and regional location.
These analyses, however, have not focused precisely on operational measures of democratic governance or sustainable human development.
UNDP as a key development organization and as the UN system’s main advocate of democratic governance needs to explore the relevance and importance of DG in SHD further, and how support to each of the pillars and their interaction can contribute to the achievement of SHD.
Project Team
The team is led by Professor Todd Landman, Director of the IDCR and includes his assistant Dr Dorothea Farquhar (PhD political science and quantitative analyst) and Dr Alejandro Quiroz Flores (PhD political science, quantitative analyst, Lecturer in the Department of Government).
The key outputs
I. Literature review on existing research showing the linkages between democratic governance and sustainable human development.
II. Preliminary report which, drawing on existing definitions and frameworks within the UN system, lays out:
- Conceptual and methodological framework that defines and measures both concepts for the purpose of this analysis;
- Theoretical framework that specifies possible causal mechanisms that link DG and SHD;
- Datasets which could be used to undertake the analysis and briefly highlight the strengths and weaknesses of available datasets in this context.
III. Cross-national and time-series statistical models that control for other explanatory factors.
IV. Final report which presents and summarizes the above outputs, with a summary using language appropriate for non-statisticians, and a technical annex.
