From Whether to Why: Democracy and Infant Mortality within India

How does democratic politics affect infant mortality? The bulk of existing research has debated whether democracies have lower levels of infant mortality than non-democracies. Yet infant mortality varies as much within countries as it does between countries, suggesting that the political processes affecting infant mortality operate at the subnational level. To shed new light on the debate this paper examines how three core democratic attributes affect infant mortality within a single democracy: India. I argue that higher levels of political representation, citizens’ participation, and electoral competition provide political incentives for elected representatives to reduce infant mortality. The theory is tested with an error correction model on an original times-series dataset from 28 Indian states between 1981 and 2010. The results suggest that the core attributes of democracy reduce infant mortality.