Political Regime and Undernourishment

Abstract

This paper analyzes the relationship between political regimes and undernourishment. This study reports, using Time-Series-Cross-Section (TSCS) data, that democracy has a positive effect on undernourishment in Sub-Saharan African countries between 1991 and 2014. The previous work has tackled human development problems for a long time. Only a few studies, however, have tried to explain empirically why some countries suffer from undernourishment and others do not. This article theorizes that democratic countries have a lower undernourishment rate than authoritarian countries especially in poor countries like those in Sub-Saharan Africa, and tests the theory with statistical analysis. The result shows that the positive effect of democracy is statistically supported although the previous literature pointed out that democracy in poor countries is not functional. The case study on Malawi also reveals a causal mechanism on how democracy reduces undernourishment mainly through agricultural reforms.