Information equality and democracy in the information age: Cross-national time-series analyses

This study tests Simpson’s theory that information equality promotes democracy. While Simpson (1997) argues that information equality is one of the most crucial conditions for democratization, information equality is poorly measured. It only uses a single indicator, literacy rate, and does not reflect the mode of information distribution. Therefore, this study attempts to test Simpson’s theory with new measurements which reflect the theory more appropriately for the information age – the number of internet users and the percentage of the labor force that has received a secondary education. Using cross-national time-series analysis on 177 countries from 1990 to 2013, this study found that Simpson’s theory is not supported with sufficient empirical evidence. Contrary to the expectation, both the number of internet users and the labor force that has received a secondary education are not significantly associated with the level of democracy.