Determinants of health and education equality: evidence from post-Soviet states

Purpose: This article examines the determinants of social equality in the education and healthcare sectors in the 15 post-Soviet states. Focussing on regime type and civil society organisations (CSOs), it argues that countries where liberal principles of democracy are achieved or have a stronger civil society deliver a more equitable social policy. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical analysis rests upon a time-series cross-sectional (TSCS) analysis from 1992 to 2019. Data are collected from the Quality of Government (QoG) Dataset 2020 and the Variates of Democracy (V-DEM) Dataset 2020. Findings: The findings demonstrate that while regime type only partially accounts for social equality, as electoral autocracies do not have more equitable social policy than close regime types and democracy weakly explains equality levels, the strength of CSOs is associated with more equality. Originality/value: The article challenges dominant approaches that consider electoral democracy to be related to more equal social policy and demonstrates that de-facto free and fair elections do not impinge on social equality, while the strength of liberal and civil liberties and CSOs correlate with more equitable social policy.