We study whether a democracy improves a measure of individual wellbeing; human heights. Drawing on individual-level datasets, we test the hypothesis using a battery of eight different measures of democracy and derived averages, and include models accounting for several confounders, regional and...

First, we demonstrate that structural explanations based on socio-economic factors are insufficient to account for authoritarian regression in two of collapsology’s “crucial cases” – inter-war Germany and post-communist Russia. Instead, (a) a dearth of pro-democratic actors on the elite,...