IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/restud/v92y2025i2p621-655..html

(Successful) Democracies Breed Their Own Support

Author

Listed:
  • Daron Acemoglu
  • Nicolás Ajzenman
  • Cevat Giray Aksoy
  • Martin Fiszbein
  • Carlos Molina

Abstract

Using large-scale survey data covering more than 110 countries and exploiting within-country variation across cohorts and surveys, we show that individuals with longer exposure to democracy display stronger support for democratic institutions, and that this effect is almost entirely driven by exposure to democracies with successful performance in terms of economic growth, control of corruption, peace and political stability, and public goods provision. Across a variety of specifications, estimation methods, and samples, the results are robust, and the timing and nature of the effects are consistent with our interpretation. We also present suggestive evidence that democratic institutions that receive support from their citizens perform better in the face of negative shocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Daron Acemoglu & Nicolás Ajzenman & Cevat Giray Aksoy & Martin Fiszbein & Carlos Molina, 2025. "(Successful) Democracies Breed Their Own Support," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 92(2), pages 621-655.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:92:y:2025:i:2:p:621-655.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/restud/rdae051
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Despina Gavresi & Anastasia Litina, 2025. "The Legacy of Growing Up in a Recession on Attitudes Towards European Union," CESifo Working Paper Series 12082, CESifo.
    2. Magud, Nicolás E. & Pienknagura, Samuel, 2025. "Inflated concerns: Exposure to past inflationary episodes and preferences for price stability," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    3. Joël Cariolle & Yasmine Elkhateeb & Mathilde Maurel, 2022. "(Mis-)information technology: Internet use and perception of democracy in Africa," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 22010, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    4. Daron Acemoglu & Tuomas Pekkarinen & Kjell G Salvanes & Matti Sarvimäki, 2025. "The Making of Social Democracy: the Economic and Electoral Consequences of Norway’s 1936 Folk School Reform," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 23(1), pages 119-158.
    5. Csaba, László, 2025. "Az összehasonlító gazdaságtan a 21. században [Comparative economics - a 21st century perspective]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(7), pages 645-668.
    6. Moriconi, Simone & Peri, Giovanni & Turati, Riccardo, 2023. "Are Immigrants More Left Wing than Natives?," IZA Discussion Papers 16164, IZA Network @ LISER.
    7. Titelman, Noam & Prieto, Joaquin, 2026. "The cumulative effects of macromacroeconomic performance on political and economic attitudes: evidence from Latin America," SocArXiv 29ytf_v1, Center for Open Science.
    8. Cariolle, Joël & Elkhateeb, Yasmine & Maurel, Mathilde, 2024. "Misinformation technology: Internet use and political misperceptions in Africa," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 400-433.
    9. Sunde, Uwe & Kotschy, Rainer, 2022. "Does Demography Determine Democratic Attitudes?," CEPR Discussion Papers 17624, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Ravi Vora & Guglielmo Zappala, 2025. "Endogenous Green Preferences," CESifo Working Paper Series 11857, CESifo.
    11. Ritzen, Jo & Nillesen, Eleonora, 2022. "A chance for optimism," MERIT Working Papers 2022-026, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    12. Mensah,Justice Tei & Hirfrfot,Kibrom Tafere & Abay,Kibrom A., 2022. "Saving Lives through Technology : Mobile Phones and Infant Mortality," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9978, The World Bank.
    13. Zsoka Koczan & Alexander Plekhanov, 2024. "Scarred for Life? Recession Experiences, Beliefs and the State," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 31(4), pages 1074-1111, August.
    14. Mensah,Justice Tei, 2023. "Mobile Phones and Local Economic Development : A Global Evidence," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10526, The World Bank.
    15. Hong, Justin Jihao & Lyu, Yuhan, 2025. "Not always a Panacea: History education and identity-building in Taiwan," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 229(C).
    16. Nicolas Cerkez, 2025. "Extreme Weather Events and the Support for Democracy," CSAE Working Paper Series 2025-03, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    17. Federico Maggio & Dominic Rohner & Alessandro Saia, 2024. "The Democracy Dividend: ˗How Early Exposure to Democracy Shapes Health Outcomes˗," CESifo Working Paper Series 11307, CESifo.
    18. Tianyu Fan, 2025. "Measuring Geopolitical Alignment and Economic Growth," Papers 2507.04833, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2026.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:92:y:2025:i:2:p:621-655.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/restud .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.