Study of Relationship between Democracy and Human Development among OPEC Member Countries

Democracy is a concept that encompasses people´s participation in decision-making in community to determine political، economic، social and cultural structure، freedom of expression، freedom to create coalitions، protest right and so on. Wealth and income effects of natural resources on a country''s political institutions and democracy have always been sources of the important issues at the intersection of political science and economics. “Polity2” index which refers to the type of regimes of countries is considered as a representative of the level of democracy. This paper desire to investigate correctness or incorrectness of the hypothesis implying on a positive and significant linkage between democracy and human development in OPEC-member countries، by using panel data approach during 1996-2010. Estimation results confirm a positive and significant relationship between democracy and human development index of mentioned countries.