Cовместный семинар МЦИИР НИУ ВШЭ и ЛИСОМО РЭШ

15-го ноября в Международном центре изучения институтов и развития состоялся очередной совместный семинар МЦИИР НИУ ВШЭ и ЛИСОМО РЭШ.

В рамках семинара свой доклад “The recipe for democracy? Improvement in diet as a structural prerequisite for political change” представил Щербак Андрей, старший научный сотрудник Лаборатории сравнительных социальных исследований, доцент НИУ ВШЭ в Санкт-Петербурге.

Аннотация:The paper aims to reveal the relationship between improvement in human diet and transition to democracy. The spread of a “European diet” – the diet with historically unprecedented high proportion of animal proteins in daily calorie intake – is considered to be a proxy for the middle class expansion; a large middle class is one the crucial prerequisites for a successful transition to democracy. In contrast to other studies, I regard European diet as an outcome of long historical transformation and show that improvement in nutrition preceded regime change. To get data on nutrients consumption around the world I apply to the Food balance sheets data from FAOSTAT. Based on this data I was able to define a European diet as the one containing animal protein-rich items (mostly, meat and dairy), alcohol beverages and sugar. Using OLS, factor analysis and SEM I test the effects of rising nutrition status on the chance of transition to democracy. My findings reveal that improvement in diet might be regarded as a proxy for the middle class measurement and thus for democratization.