Development and Democracy: Power and Problems of Empirical Research

Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1993

Any account of the social and economic conditions of democracy must come to terms with the central finding of the cross-national statistical research: a sturdy (though not perfect) association between economic development and democracy. To tackle these questions of causation, we adopted a strategy of analytic induction based on comparative historical research. Our program of comparative historical research confirmed the conclusion of the cross-national statistical analyses of the correlates of political democracy: the level of economic development is causally related to the development of political democracy. However, the underlying reason for the connection, in our view, is that capitalist development transforms the class structure, enlarging the working and middle classes and facilitating their self-organization, thus making it more difficult for elites to exclude them politically. Simultaneously, development weakens the landed upper class, democracy's most consistent opponent.

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.

2001

Abstract:'Recently scholars identified a global'explosion'of democracy as a sharply distinctive period within Huntington's Third Wave of democratization. So far the role of modernization has not been analyzed with particular regard to this outstanding phase of democratization. Given that modernization has economic as well as cultural aspects, we test two prominent theses. First, we test Przeworski/Limongi s claim that transitions to democracy do not derive from economic modernization.

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.

The past thirty years has seen an increased focus on democracy promotion as a development tool, a move accompanied by strong debate on the issue. This study looks to analyse the past arguments and methodologies and build on the debate using a comparative approach to assess lower income democracies and autocracies across a range of development indicators. In considering development progress since 2000, the study finds that lower income democracies perform better than lower income autocracies across most indicators; in contrast with many commonly held assumptions and past results.

has written numerous books and articles on international relations and development issues. He has written excellent textbook covering a number of major issues relating to the current wave of democratizations and also examines the debate over the meaning of democracy, the relative validity of various generalizations concerning the process of democratization and the impact of democracy on international relations. In the book Democracy and Democratization-Processes and Prospects in a Changing World, Professor Sorensen brilliantly combines the discussion of general trends and theoretical questions of democratization with a wellinformed look at specific issues in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It takes up recent empirical developments as a challenge to theory building in the field of Political Science, International Relations and transition research.

1999

Most of us, ardent democrats all, would like to believe that democracy is not merely good in itself, it is also valuable in enhancing the process of development. Of course, if we take a suitably broad concept of development to incorporate general well-being of the population at large, including some basic civil and political freedoms, a democracy which ensures these freedoms is, almost by definition, more conducive to development on these counts than a non-democratic regime. We may, however, choose to look at freedoms as potentially instrumental to development, as is usually the case in the large empirical literature that aims at finding a statistical correlation between some measure of democracy and some measure of a narrower concept of development (that does not include those freedoms as an intrinsic part of the nature of development itself). I have in general found this empirical literature rather unhelpful and unpersuasive. It is unhelpful because usually it does not confirm a causal process and the results often go every which way. Even the three surveys of the empirical literature that I have seen come out with three different conclusions: One by Sirowy and Inkeles (1991) is supportive of a negative relationship between democracy and development; one by Campos (1994) is of a generally positive relationship; and the one by Przeworski and Limongi (1993) is agnostic ("we do not know whether R. Wade, Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of the

2007

2006

Does democracy promote economic development? Despite many attempts to address this question, the answer remains elusive. Richer countries are generally democratic. But this cross country correlation could reflect reverse causation or omitted variables. Evidence that political regime changes produce subsequent economic growth is considerably weaker. Does this mean that political regimes have no systematic influence on economic development? Not necessarily, but-given the data limitations-such causal effects are difficult to identify from the within-country variation. A plausible reason for this difficulty is that "democracy" is too blunt a concept. Democracies and autocracies come in various forms, and regime changes come about in various circumstances. If this heterogeneity is not random, the correlation between specific features of political reforms and their occurrence makes it hazardous to estimate an average causal effect on economic growth, or other outcomes. This paper illustrates three specific instances where the details of democratic reform influence the effect on economic outcomes. Section I of the paper clarifies our empirical strategy. Section II zooms in on political

2018