Democracy and Development: A Complex Relationship by

2019

Democracy is a vital element for the modernization of societies. Through democracy, countries can realize their economic development. Economic development is necessary to establish the required infrastructure in a country that will enable it to be classified as a developed country. A common value held by all rich and happy countries is democracy. Democracy is the foundation of political stability within a country. Political stability is an indispensable element for producing the policies required for economic stability. It is only possible to achieve stability in the economy when there is political stability created by a democratic environment. In almost all countries that do not have any democratic governing structure political conflicts and economic instability could potentially be seen. In this study, the relationship between democracy and economic development is analyzed as well as why democracy is necessary for economic development. The study also shows the relationship between...

It is generally accepted that there is some kind of relationship between economic development and democracy, and that it can be demonstrated by quantitative empirical evidence (Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens 1992: 11-39). For example, claims that there is a strong association between the two, Helliwell (1994) asserts that they exhibit a positive linear relationship, while Burkhart and claim this relationship is indeed causal. The difficulties of validating the empirical claims derive not so much from the measures of economic development as from the measures of democracy itself. Democracy is either present or absent (Pzreworski and Limongi 1997), stable or unstable (Lipset 1959), or is reflected in single scales that masquerade as summary indicators of the 'degree of democracy' or democratic performance (Polity III, see also Landman 1999). In other words, the dependent variable (democracy) is insufficiently sensitive or differentiated to provide a proper basis for testing the relationship. Our inquiry deepens the investigation of the relationship by 'unpacking' the dependent variable. To do so it employs a newly constructed crossnational and time-series data set that provides separate measures of eight core values of liberal democratic government. The data set contains measures for forty cases, including both advanced industrial and 'third wave' democracies, over twenty-nine years. The values are accountability, constraint, representation, participation, political rights, civil rights, minority rights and property rights. Our model assumes that the quality of liberal democratic government is not unidimensional but can be measured across this range of values, so creating 'performance profiles' and demonstrating the likely trade-offs across distinct democratic values. Consequently, the inquiry begins to explore the nature of the relationship between development and democracy by measuring in what degrees and in what ways development may influence the performance of liberal democratic government.

It is reasonable to declare democracy is a good concept because it offers free human choice and it furthers the good of political participation. But there is a debate between democracy and development as concept, about the effects of democracy on the development process and vice versa, some argue, for example, that the experiences of Korea, China, and Indonesia that a strong authoritarian state is better able to engineer a successful process of development than a democracy (because of its ability to discipline fractious demand groups).this leaves a large debate on the relationship between the two concepts.

IOSR Journals , 2019

There are floods of debates among scholars over whether democracy drives development or development that drives democracy. The first stream of the literature argues that democracy is a precondition for development because of its accountability mechanism, open participation, checks and balances, rule of law, respects for human rights and good governance. Arguing further, the scholars assert that democracy promotion is prior to expansion of economic development, pointing out that empirical evidence indicates that democracy has consistently out-performed non democracies in terms of indicators of socioeconomic wellbeing. The second stream of literature on the other hand maintains that development drives democracy, anchoring their argument on the fact that economic development leads to political decay giving rooms for political instability which later moves toward democracy through and after institutionalization. Furthering this debate, the scholars argued that the stability of democracy is dependent on certain socio-economic conditions such high GNP or GDP per capita, wide spread and high educational level coupled with high level of urbanization. The data for the study is gathered from secondary sources while content analysis and narrative analytical technique is used for data analysis. The theoretical framework that guided the analysis of the study is democracy first, development later theory. Pitching tent with the first strand of the literature, the study argues that democracy is a Sequa non for development due to the overwhelming empirical evidence supporting the school of thought.

Forthcoming in the Palgrave Handbook of International Development (edited by Jean Grugel and Daniel Hammett)

There is a general acceptance in both popular discourse and the more mainstream parts of political science and international studies that democracy and development are conducive to each other. However, this is an extremely problematic view. Because both concepts often tend to be taken at face value and are all too rarely problematized, they remain inadequately understood by policymakers, analysts and academics alike. Despite the fact that they reflect but one perspective among many, it is globally hegemonic, liberal understandings of both that have decisively shaped the prevailing common sense regarding what they are deemed to be. Not only is this questionable intellectually, in that the belief that democracy and development exist in symbiosis rests on deeply political foundations, but the practical attempts to promote them globally that flow out of this also embody a range of ideological characteristics that are far from value-neutral. The argument advanced in the chapter is not that democracy and development are not, or cannot be, supportive of each other. Rather, I illustrate how, with reference to three distinct contemporary phenomena – ambiguities in the official global democracy and development agendas, new patterns of authoritarian resilience and development, and the emerging democratic and developmental crisis in the West – the relationship between the two is more complex, ambiguous and contingent than it often appears.

This paper examines the effect of democracy on development outcome of Bangladesh for the period 1972 to 2016. It analyzes both the long-run relation and the direction of causality using the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) framework. The paper uses the Polity data constructed by the Polity IV project as the proxy for democracy, and GDP per capita (constant 2010 US$) as the proxy for development. The estimation based on VEC Model suggests the coefficients of co-integration equations do not adjust towards either long-run or short-run equilibrium, meaning that the results find no evidence of any relationship between democracy and economic development in Bangladesh. /BIGDBRACUniversity twitter.com/BIGD_BRACU BIGD, BRAC University http://bigd.bracu.ac.bd

ECPR Joint Sessions, April, 2000

Does economic development lead to political democracy? Or does political democracy generate economic development? Through reviewing literature of political economy of development, this study attempts to show audience at least five possible patterns and theoretical explanations of the connections between development and democracy. They are: 1) development first, democracy later, also modernization theory, 2) political change process, 3) development not leads to democracy, 4) democracy first, development later, and 5) democracy not matters in development. Furthermore, I point out that in the process of democratization economic development varies from stage to stage: it declines in the early phrase, but increases in the later; investigating economic change corresponding to political transition is critical to reconsider the causality between development and democracy. Lastly, I conclude that the controversy over development and democracy is inconclusive and will be continuing.

Does democracy improve the quality of life for its citizens? Scholars have long assumed that it does, but recent research has called this orthodoxy into question. This article reviews this body of work, develops a series of causal pathways through which democracy might improve social welfare, and tests two hypotheses: (a) that a country's level of democracy in a given year affects its level of human development and (b) that its stock of democracy over the past century affects its level of human development. Using infant mortality rates as a core measure of human development, we conduct a series of time-series-cross-national statistical tests of these two hypotheses. We find only slight evidence for the first proposition, but substantial support for the second. Thus, we argue that the best way to think about the relationship between democracy and development is as a time-dependent, historical phenomenon.