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of holding on to their office by providing services selectively to those groups that
they depend upon. So instead of providing universal access to services, politicians
target services to special interest or core supporters to ensure future votes.
14. Life expectancy rates also depend on the coalition size that a ruler uses to govern.
Being born in a polity that scores highest on the inclusiveness index adds nearly
fourteen years to life expectancy, whereas an order-of-magnitude increase in per
capita income adds only five years. Both are significant, but the impact of
coalition size has dramatic results, both by increasing life expectancy (because of
government spending priorities) and by creating a more open economic system,
since a competitive political system is a significant contributor to economic
growth. By way of illustration, per capita income in Brazil in 1972, eight years
after the military coup, was $2,907. In the same year in Jamaica, a functioning but
narrowly based parliamentary democracy; per capita income was about the same,
$3,099. According to the “coalition size” index of inclusiveness, however,
Jamaica scored 1.0 while Brazil scored .25. It is therefore not unusual - though it
may be surprising to some - to find that whereas life expectancy in Brazil in 1972
was 59.8 years, in Jamaica it was 68.6 years, nearly a decade longer. Similar
evidence can be marshaled using other measures of social welfare, including the
equality of educational opportunity for women and men, differences in infant
mortality rates, and so on. What is more, the data also suggest that when a
government switches, whether by choice or the compulsion of circumstances,
from being exclusive to being inclusive in nature, economic growth shows a
marked improvement over the next three to five years.
Convention