Constructing Democracy: The Underlying Factors That Create a Healthy Democracy

Abstract

Objective: This paper seeks to analyze how three different factors affect the health of a democracy: voter turnout, electoral system, and election management body. Background: While extensive literature discusses voting’s impacts on policy, little literature specifically correlates it with democratic health.  For years, scholars have debated the merits of various electoral systems, especially regarding the structure of new democracies in Africa and Asia. Most scholars agree that there is not one particular system that is universally advantageous over the rest; instead, the optimal system depends on the country in question and the specific goals and criteria. This paper will analyze 9 main electoral systems (Table 1) and their impacts on the health of democracy. Election Management Bodies (EMBS) manage the operations of an election. The 3 main types are Governmental, Independent, and Mixed.  Methods: Various datasets from International IDEA, are used to achieve the objective of this paper. For each main question, boxplots are generated to visualize the distribution of democratic health across the categories. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is used to determine whether any statistically significant differences exist. Results: The first ANOVA model reveals that nations with a high health of democracy have a greater average voter turnout than those with medium health of democracy, and likewise for medium and low. Furthermore, a statistically significant difference exists between List PR and TRS regarding their impacts on a democracy’s health. Finally, Governmental EMBs are associated with high-performing democracies, while Independent EMBs are dominant in Authoritarian regimes. This is statistically significant.