POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL EQUALITY: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS.

This paper examines the validity of the propositions that tile growth of political democracy has reduced social inequality, and that political democracy mediates much of the effect of the level of economic development on social equality. Social equality is defined empirically in terms of three variables: a measure of experience with social insurance programs; a measure of income inequality; and a social welfare index. The analysis of a cross-section of sixty western and third-world countries (1960) indicates that the effect of the level of economic development on each dependent variable is positive and curvilinear, but that the bivariate effects of political democracy on the latter are quite spurious, once the level of economic development is taken into account. Political democracy exerts no significant effects (additive or non-additive,) on social equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]