Turkey and Iran: Does Democracy Really Help

            A popular idea in the US, and in many developed democratic nations, is to believe that democracy makes all aspects of life better. Though authors like Sen (1999) posit that democracies ensure that tragedies such as famine are less likely to occur, this is no guarantee that democracies protect citizens from poverty and infrastructural neglect. This paper intends to investigate two nations: Turkey and Iran. The countries are similar in many ways, save for the fact that the former is a democracy and the latter is not. By examining factors of poverty and electrification rates, it may be examined how democracy plays a role in the way a country takes care of its poor.