Abstract There is growing evidence that schooling and income associate positively with democracy and patience, suggesting a potential link between democracy and patience. We test if indeed the political regime of countries associates with the average patience of their citizens. We document a highly significant positive raw association between the level of democracy and patience for all the political regime indices that we use. Considering regional controls, geographical conditions and culture (proxied by religion) only diminishes the strength of the association slightly. However, economic development and schooling have a mediating role in the relationship between patience and political regime.JEL: code, D02, D12