Is economic development conducive to political democracy? Does democracy foster or hinder material welfare? These two questions are examined by looking at the experiences of 135 countries between 1950 and 1990. Descriptive information, statistical analyses, and historical narratives are interwoven to gain an understanding of the dynamic of political regimes and their impact on economic development. The often surprising findings dispel any notion of a tradeoff between democracy and development. Economic development does not generate democracies, but democracies are much more likely to survive in wealthy societies.
Democracy and Development
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"[Democracy and Development] is "must reading" for any scholar serious about political economy. I predict that the book will be a milestone in our inquiries into political systems and economic performance." Journal of Democracy
"Democracy and Development is a great book. . . [It] is based on a rich data set covering most of the countries in the world from 1950 to 1990 and including dozens of variables. With its quantitative skills it combines sophisticated analysis of the data." Latin American Politics and Society
"This is the best defence of democracy of its generation. On almost every count, economic and humanitarian, it shows that democracy outperforms authoritarianism. Western governments which justify their support for dictatorships on the ground that this is ultimately beneficial for development are simply mistaken. Unlike most treatments of the subject, the conclusions are based not on theoretical supposition or normative preference, but on rigorous and sophisticated empirical analysis." - Francis Castles, Australian National University
"This book is a tour de force, a model of how research should be done, on a question that matters. Przeworski and his colleagues take great care in their measurement of difficult concepts like "democracy" and "growth", and in their specification of the causal processes that are involved. The result is a set of findings that are often surprising, but in which we can invest full confidence." - W. Phillips Shively, University of Minnesota
"There are few questions in the social sciences more fundamental than the relationship between political regimes and economic prosperity. This book sets a new standard for the field. Unabashedly empirical, yet grounded in theory, it produces a torrent of statistical evidence with which all future work will have to contend." - Dani Rodrik Professor of International Political Economy, Harvard University
"[Democracy and Development] is "must reading" for any scholar serious about political economy. I predict that the book will be a milestone in our inquiries into political systems and economic performance. Its arguments will be quoted and requoted. The answers the authors have provided will be visited and revisited. Their findings will be tested and retested. There will be no end to this research enterprise, only beginning after beginning. In this respect, it resembles the democratic process itself, which constantly reinvents and reinvigorates itself." Journal of Democracy
"...an excellent book based on a long-term, nearly comprehensive analysis." Journal of Politics
"Democracy and Development is a great book. . . [It] is based on a rich data set covering most of the countries in the world from 1950 to 1990 and including dozens of variables. With its quantitative skills it combines sophisticated analysis of the data." Latin American Politics and Society
"This is the best defence of democracy of its generation. On almost every count, economic and humanitarian, it shows that democracy outperforms authoritarianism. Western governments which justify their support for dictatorships on the ground that this is ultimately beneficial for development are simply mistaken. Unlike most treatments of the subject, the conclusions are based not on theoretical supposition or normative preference, but on rigorous and sophisticated empirical analysis." - Francis Castles, Australian National University
"This book is a tour de force, a model of how research should be done, on a question that matters. Przeworski and his colleagues take great care in their measurement of difficult concepts like "democracy" and "growth", and in their specification of the causal processes that are involved. The result is a set of findings that are often surprising, but in which we can invest full confidence." - W. Phillips Shively, University of Minnesota
"There are few questions in the social sciences more fundamental than the relationship between political regimes and economic prosperity. This book sets a new standard for the field. Unabashedly empirical, yet grounded in theory, it produces a torrent of statistical evidence with which all future work will have to contend." - Dani Rodrik Professor of International Political Economy, Harvard University
"[Democracy and Development] is "must reading" for any scholar serious about political economy. I predict that the book will be a milestone in our inquiries into political systems and economic performance. Its arguments will be quoted and requoted. The answers the authors have provided will be visited and revisited. Their findings will be tested and retested. There will be no end to this research enterprise, only beginning after beginning. In this respect, it resembles the democratic process itself, which constantly reinvents and reinvigorates itself." Journal of Democracy
"...an excellent book based on a long-term, nearly comprehensive analysis." Journal of Politics
Book Description
Is economic development conducive to political democracy? Does democracy foster or hinder material welfare? These two questions are examined by looking at the experiences of 135 countries between 1950 and 1990. Descriptive information, statistical analyses, and historical narratives are interwoven to gain an understanding of the dynamic of political regimes and their impact on economic development. The often surprising findings dispel any notion of a tradeoff between democracy and development. Economic development does not generate democracies, but democracies are much more likely to survive in wealthy societies.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting Work,
By
This review is from: Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990 (Cambridge Studies in the Theory of Democracy) (Paperback)
I had a love/hate relationship with this book. First, and this is purely a stylistic point, I believe it could have been far better edited. It was an avalanche of statistics, statistical analyses, and presented results without a lot of discussion of why relationships emerged. Their first goal -- showing development does not "cause" democratization is, I believe, a revamp of earlier published work. It is, nonetheless, an important finding that is worth repeating. More interesting is the relationship between dictatorships and demography, but, again, aside from a little theorizing and a few statistical tests I believe the authors do little to shed much light on why different regimes affect demography differently. They begin to flesh out an argument the crux of which revolves around the ability of democratic polities to "commit" to providing social welfare over the long run, but this seems to run counter to their initial dismissal earlier in the book of the Neo-Institutional economics claim put forth by Douglass North, among others, as to the importance of institutions in "binding the hands of the sovereign." Finally, their results do show that democracies tend to survive in wealthy states, in essence becoming "unkillable" after a certain level of wealth is reached. They do little to really explain why this is, but the result gives credence to Lipset's thesis that devolpment, at the very least, helps sustain democracies. Overall I liked to book and would reccommend it as an assigned book in a comparative politics/political economy class.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sophisticated and brilliant,
By
This review is from: Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990 (Cambridge Studies in the Theory of Democracy) (Paperback)
It's a marvellous book. I took a course last year with Limongi about the book and it was great. The main feature I like in the book is the sophisticated discussion about selection bias in comparative politicas and how to avoid it. In fact the methodological discussions in it are fundamental to all schollars reaserching in comparative politics.
However, I think that some improvement could be made to the book in some statistical techniques used, and also in the reproducibility of the reasearch. Nowadays I would love to hace access to the code used to run regressions (altough I suspect they did it in SPSS), just to name one improvement possible on reproducibility. Besides, I think they should explicitly had treated some time correlation problem in their data. Despite that, It is a great book and fundamental in any reasearch in comparative politics.
2 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Monumental Work!!!,
By Moon-Joong (NY, US) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990 (Cambridge Studies in the Theory of Democracy) (Paperback)
Too many conjectures and too many theories have been addressed concerning the relationship between polities and material well-being in the world. But they have been raised without a proper test of them, without empirics. This book completely cleans all kinds of intellectual garbages, clarifies the existing arguments, and above all provides a series of the sohpisticated tests. Adam Przeworski and his comrades did a marvelous job.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
To study systematically the origins and the consequences of political regimes, we need first to determine what regime each country has had during each period of its history. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
exogenous with regard, wealthier dictatorships, wealthy dictatorships, countries with incomes, dictatorships die, presidential democracies, exit year, group dummy variables, legislative selection, past instability, regime selection, many dictatorships, exogenous conditions, wealthy democracies, democratic years, annual observations, labor share, executive selection, regime instability, regime transitions, variable coded, physical capital stock Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
South Korea, Latin America, United States, Soviet Union, Sri Lanka, East Germany, Dictatorships Democracies, Dominican Republic, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, United Kingdom, Variable Coefficient Standard, West Germany, Central African Republic, Costa Rica, Burkina Faso, World War, Eastern Europe, Saudi Arabia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Western Europe, Western Samoa, World Bank, Comparison Chi-squared New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
To study systematically the origins and the consequences of political regimes, we need first to determine what regime each country has had during each period of its history. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
exogenous with regard, wealthier dictatorships, wealthy dictatorships, countries with incomes, dictatorships die, presidential democracies, exit year, group dummy variables, legislative selection, past instability, regime selection, many dictatorships, exogenous conditions, wealthy democracies, democratic years, annual observations, labor share, executive selection, regime instability, regime transitions, variable coded, physical capital stock Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
South Korea, Latin America, United States, Soviet Union, Sri Lanka, East Germany, Dictatorships Democracies, Dominican Republic, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, United Kingdom, Variable Coefficient Standard, West Germany, Central African Republic, Costa Rica, Burkina Faso, World War, Eastern Europe, Saudi Arabia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Western Europe, Western Samoa, World Bank, Comparison Chi-squared New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 43
books:
See all 43 books this book cites
60
books
cite this book:
See all 60 books citing this book
- The World Bank: A Third World View by H.N. Ray on page 246, and Back Matter
- Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics by Matthew Soberg Shugart in Back Matter
- Continuous Univariate Distributions, Vol. 1 (Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics) by Norman L. Johnson in Back Matter
- Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy by Joseph A. Schumpeter in Back Matter
- Population and Development: Old Debates, New Conclusions (U.S.-Third World Policy Perspectives No. 19) by Robert Cassen in Back Matter
See all 43 books this book cites
- Korea's Democratization by Samuel S. Kim on page 41, page 223, and Back Matter
- The Paradox Of Wealth And Poverty: Mapping The Ethical Dilemmas Of Global Development by Daniel Little on page 233, page 241, and page 245
- The Paradox Of Wealth And Poverty: Mapping The Ethical Dilemmas Of Global Development by Daniel Little on page 233, page 241, and page 245
- States and Markets: A Primer in Political Economy by Adam Przeworski in Front Matter, Back Matter, and Back Cover
- Democracy and the Rule of Law (Cambridge Studies in the Theory of Democracy) by José María Maravall in Front Matter (1), Front Matter (2), and page 144
See all 60 books citing this book
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