2 - Economic Development and Political Regimes

Summary

Introduction

Any casual glance at the world will show that poor countries tend to have authoritarian regimes, and wealthy countries democratic ones. The question is why. What are the conditions that determine whether democracy or dictatorship prevails? What causes political regimes to rise, endure, and fall? Can their transformations be explained generally, or are they caused by circumstances idiosyncratic to each country or period? Are they driven by economic development or by other factors, such as the preceding political history, cultural traditions, political institutions, or the international political climate?

We begin with the observation that the incidence of democracy is undoubtedly related to the level of economic development. Having established the central importance of development, we distinguish two causal mechanisms that may generate this relationship, asking whether democracies are more likely to emerge as countries develop economically under dictatorships or, having emerged for reasons other than economic development, are only more likely to survive in countries that are already developed. This analysis is extended first to the impact of economic performance and then to a panoply of social and political factors. A separate section is devoted to the impacts of different types of democratic institutions. A summary closes the chapter. The statistical models on which the analysis is based are presented in the appendixes.

Development and Democracy

First advanced in 1959, S. M. Lipset's observation that democracy is related to economic development has generated the largest body of research on any topic in comparative politics.