Illuminating Democracy: Trends, Predictors, and Outcomes of Liberal Democracy 1972-2013
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- March 21, 2019
- Creator
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Noble, Mark
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Sociology
- Abstract
- This dissertation examines recent trends in liberal democracy from 1972 to 2013 and addresses the current debate revolving around worldwide democratic stagnation. While some scholars claim that worldwide democracy is rather stable, this dissertation finds this to be a less than accurate statement. Going beneath worldwide trends to investigate differences in world regions as well as differences by income groups, several instances of democratic stagnation and decline are found that go against the perspective of democratic stability. Viewing 1972 to 2013 as a consistent period belies several sub-periods where the growth of liberal democracy differed quite markedly. Building on insights from a latent growth curve modeling perspective and the insights of these distinct sub-periods of growth, a piecewise empirical model is found to describe these recent trends better than existing models. This model, however, illustrates that common predictors of liberal democracy from several important sociological perspectives including modernization theory, dependency/ world-systems theory, world polity theory, as well as other global factors do not tell us much about the spread of liberal democracy around the world since the mid-2000s to today. Thus, our current theories cannot illuminate why liberal democracy is currently stagnating across the world. Finally, this dissertation investigates if liberal democracy matters for population health and empirically tests the previously identified distributive process. Utilizing structural equation modeling to test the direct and indirect effects of liberal democracy on health, the evidence is consistent with the distributive effect. In addition, another potential mechanism mediated by gender equality is found that offers additional insight into this distributive effect. Beyond these mechanisms there is no evidence that liberal democracy impacts health directly.
- Date of publication
- December 2016
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Advisor
- Shandra, John
- Caren, Neal
- Mouw, Ted
- Pearce, Lisa D.
- Bollen, Kenneth
- Degree
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
- Graduation year
- 2016
- Language
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