Suchergebnisse

This article focuses on the nature of party systems to explain variations in foreign direct investment inflows within developing democracies. We hypothesize a positive relationship between the effective number of parliamentary parties and foreign direct investment inflows. Large effective number of parliamentary parties is indicative of the expropriation risks as well as stability of the political environment of host countries. We thus argue that expropriation risks are low when the presence of multiple parties makes drastic, impulsive changes in economic policies difficult. We also suggest that a larger number of parties represent diverse societal interests better, reducing the chances of underrepresented social groups driving political instability. The relationship between effective number of parliamentary party and foreign direct investment inflows is tested on a sample of 56 developing democracies from 1985 to 2011. The evidence presented lends strong support to the argument and is found robust to a number of alternative empirical scenarios.

Abstract
Numerous studies examine the micro-dynamics of subjective well-being (SWB) generally, or life satisfaction (LS) more specifically. Others also document the macro determinants of SWB and LS. We propose a model linking the two, in which an individual's life satisfaction is contingent on (1) personal circumstances, (2) national factors such as democratic governance and the national wealth, and (3) the explicit interaction of these two levels of analysis. We test three sets of hypotheses that arise from this model with compiled data from six waves of the World Values Survey (WVS) data. The empirical evidence we present supports most of the hypotheses, including our novel proposition that both national wealth and democracy reduce the effect of individual personal income on LS.