Conquer Club

Off the top of my head, every advanced nation in the world has Western-style democracy. Many people say that for other nations to fully develop, they too will need to adopt democracy at some point.

Is this true? In the case of China, federalism has already made significant contributions by itself, and it might be the case that some changes in the legal system (i.e. more consistent enforcement, independence from politics) are all that is now required. Does anyone here know much about this? How crucial is democracy to development?

Feel free to use examples other than China.

mrswdk wrote:Off the top of my head, every advanced nation in the world has Western-style democracy. Many people say that for other nations to fully develop, they too will need to adopt democracy at some point.

Is this true? In the case of China, federalism has already made significant contributions by itself, and it might be the case that some changes in the legal system (i.e. more consistent enforcement, independence from politics) are all that is now required. Does anyone here know much about this? How crucial is democracy to development?

Feel free to use examples other than China.

And what would come first (ignoring China) - democracy or development?

I like the chances of this thread.

mrswdk wrote:Off the top of my head, every advanced nation in the world has Western-style democracy. Many people say that for other nations to fully develop, they too will need to adopt democracy at some point.

Is this true? In the case of China, federalism has already made significant contributions by itself, and it might be the case that some changes in the legal system (i.e. more consistent enforcement, independence from politics) are all that is now required. Does anyone here know much about this? How crucial is democracy to development?

Feel free to use examples other than China.

From what I recall, democracy itself is not quite related to development. You can look at the polity IV index and see high ratings of democracy being loosely or not at all correlated with 'development' (e.g. GDP per-capita).

The economic freedom index gets to the point much better. Opening up greater possibilities of trade unsurprisingly increases GDP. (Note: China's shift toward a market economy from late 1970s and onward). Chile, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan have their 50-year stories to tell about economic development (most were dictatorships for a large part of their history too).

Generally, it's not about having a bunch of people cast their vote for some party. It depends on institutions which promote the rule of law, stable and predictable laws, property rights, and relatively unhampered prices. So, it's not just about democracy, but rather it's more about promoting those institutions.

Rome seemed to do pretty well without it. For a long time, too. Until the time came when it didn't.

Overall, I guess I'm ambivalent.

Bollocks.

Mrs. WDK, you should check out:

http://mruniversity.com/

and their economic development section. It's an excellent online (and free) project. It'll address your questions and give you plenty more.

and Khan Academy too.