Symposium on Democracy and Development

A cademic fashions often follow the public political mood.In a period when euphoric public commentators have announced "the end of history" in the triumph of capitalist democracy, one sees an increasing number of scholarly studies attempting to show, often on the basis of crosscountry statistical evidence and a bit of wishful thinking, a positive effect of democracy on development.It is in this context refreshing to see the agnostic results reported by Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi in their paper.On the basis of their review of the theoretical arguments and statistical studies they conclude rather bluntly: "We do not know whether democracy fosters or hinders economic growth."Their brief but fairly exhaustive examination of the various statistical studies of the last few decades shows the studies to be hopelessly inconclusive and beset with serious methodological problems.At the analytical level, they argue that it is not at all clear if democracy, with its (slow) empowerment of the less wealthy, secures growth-fostering capitalist property rights better than dictatorships.Democracies may actually be more susceptible to pressures for immediate consumption and other particularistic demands that may hamper long-run investment.On the other hand, authoritarian rulers who have the capacity to resist such pressures may instead be self-aggrandizing, plundering the surplus of the economy.In fact, authoritarian regimes may come in different kinds, some deriving their legitimacy from providing order and stability, some from rapid growth.Sah (1991) has argued that authoritarian regimes exhibit a larger variance in economic performance than democracies.