“We do not know whether democracy fosters or hiders economic growth”. That’s the conclusion of Przeworski and Limongi when assessing if democracy has an impact on economic growth. I recognize that falsifying an assertion equals getting closer to the truth, however it is somewhat frustrating to only know that we don’t know.
However, in that case, their article and observation is a stepping stone on which authors like Gerring, Bond, Barndt and Moreno (GBBM) could draw to assess this relationship further. In fact, it is a revolution to doubt about the fact that democracy fosters economic growth.(I don’t know if they were the first to call it into question). Therefore, it seems essential before digging deeper into the question to let this doubt emerge and to justify it.
GBBM offer a new concept to think about this relationship in a statistically significant way. The concept of democratic stock, which measures a “country’s accumulated stock of democracy rather than its level of democracy at a particular moment in time” (325). Their hypothesis is that “the longer a country remains democratic, the greater will be its physical, human, social and political capital- and the better its growth performance” (325). There are numerous assumptions and I will not discuss all of them, but I will focus on two aspects, one positive and one negative about their theory.
First, despite the difficulties to measure it I found extremely relevant the addition of the concept of “political capital”. This concept, divided in two dimensions – learning and institutionalization- is essential in my opinion to understand the consolidation of democracy. In fact, when studying political sociology back in Switzerland I have bee taught that democracy is not only a an electoral regime but also a set of practical know-hows that need to be learned by both the population and the politicians. If people don’t know how to make their voice be heard by those who are supposed to represent them it is unlikely that their interests will be taken into account. Furthermore, as GBBM argue “economic voting appears only as the electorate develops trust in new institutions and begins to treat elected politicians as guardians of the economy” (332). Those processes take time and argue in favor of a concept of democracy that makes a difference between old and newly established democracies.
However, one thing I would like to question is the usefulness of the results. Once we understood that it might take time for a democracy to foster economic growth and that prior democratic experience matters, how is that going to affect reality? How many years of democracy are necessary to achieve economic growth and how are we going to explain to the population that they have to be patient? When people are unsatisfied with the economic performance of a regime they might want to change it, and they usually have short-terms expectations. What could explain the differences between cases where people agree to wait and cases where not? Economic growth? Where does it start then? Good performances lead to good performances and it is a reinforcing circle where democracy fosters democracy?
I know that theses questions have more to do with politics than with political theory but as people’s perception is an important factor in consolidating democracy I think it is important to raise them.
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