Globalization and Democracy: A Disaggregated Analysis by Income Group

The nexus between globalization and democracy has generated fervent discussions in the relevant literature. This paper addresses the globalization-democracy question using the KOF index that allows for the multidimensionality of this process and hence different channels through which globalization can affect democracy. Furthermore, any effect exerted by globalization on democracy may differ depending on a country's attributes. To this effect, we allow for possible differences that depend upon the level of development, the sample of 110 countries used here was split into four different income groups: high, upper-middle, lower-middle and low income. On balance, the results yielded using the Polity 2 index of democracy point to a positive impact of globalization on democracy but this was not a universal finding across all income groups and differences were unearthed by the estimated panel models covering the period 1970-2011.