Democracy and Human Development in Former Socialist countries

Over the decades, many scholars have tried to study the relationship between democracy and human development, even though the results are not unique. According to this context, and considering the political changes occurred in the early ‘90s in the former socialist countries, the aim of this paper is to evaluate – empirically - whether and to what extent, the level of democracy affected the level of HD in these countries. Using data on Polity II and HDI, we find evidence of a positive relationship between democracy and HD. The results are robust also when we checked for a set of control variables as growth rate, unemployment, the degree of openness trade and log population. Moreover, descriptive statistics shows that the impact of democracy on HD was higher effects on HD in the first fifteen years of democracy, after that, as these countries became consolidated democracies, this effect was less evident.