為瞭解民主政治對經濟成長和分配平均的關係，從民主政治的機制提出假設，並 採跨國資料來分析檢驗其間的關連。結果發現民主政治與經濟成長無關，民主政治與分配平 均有正向的關連。這樣的發現仍有待進一步的分析，以瞭解為何現今的民主政治，有較高水 準的經濟發展和較為平均的分配。在本論文中，整合了經濟成長和分配平均的理論，提出均 富的指標，從現代化理論、依賴理論、發展理論和國家的角色來探討民主政治和經濟發展的 關係，除了以迴歸分析分別檢測各種理論所提出的假設外，並以整體模型來檢測民主政治對 均富的影響。在控制其他現代化和結構性因素的變數後發現，老的民主政治與均富有正面的 關係，新興的民主政治與均富沒有顯著的關係，而威權政體雖較為不均但並未有顯著較低的 均富指數。 To understand the relationships between democracy on the one hand growth and equity on the other, cross-national data have been used to test against the hypotheses. The results show that there is no relationship between democracy and growth. A positive relationship has been found between democracy and income distribution. These results, however, are tentative and weak, to answer why modern democracies have enjoyed both higher standard of living and relatively egalitarian societies. In order to demonstrate how democracy affects economic performance, by collecting all available and reliable cross-national data, major theories referred to the subject have been test thoroughly. By integrating major schools of thoughts and using Human Development Index as a proxy to growth and equity, a refined model is constructed and tested. The results show that old democracies always relate to higher HDI, new democracies have insignificant relationship with HDI. Authoritarian nations, not necessarily correlate with lower HDI, have been relatively unequal in income distribution.
