What makes democracies endure summary

The answer is: democracy, affluence, growth with moderate inflation, declining inequality, a favorable international climate, and parliamentary institutions. Among democratic regimes, there were 50 parliamentary systems, 46 presidential systems, and 8 mixed systems.

Our definition of democracy is a minimalist one. We follow Robert A. When in doubt, we err in the direction of calling a regime dictatorial.

Our classification is not idiosyncratic, but is closely related to several alternative scales of democracy. The rationale and the rules for classifying regimes are discussed in the Appendix below. It may seem tautological to say that a country should have a democratic regime this year in order to have a democracy next year. We do so in order to dispel the myth, prevalent in certain intellectual and political circles particularly in the United States since the late s, that the route to democracy is a circuitous one.

The claim is that 1 dictatorships are better at generating economic development in poor countries, and that 2 once countries have developed, their dictatorial regimes will give way to democracy.

To get to democracy, then, one had to support, or at least tolerate, dictatorships. While analyses of the impact of regimes on economic growth have generated divergent results, recent econometric evidence fails to uncover any clear regime effect. The average rate of investment is in fact slightly higher in poor democracies than in poor dictatorships; population growth is higher under dictatorships but labor productivity is lower; and investment is more efficiently allocated under democracies.

Dictatorships are no more likely to generate economic growth than democracies. These figures should be enough to dispel any notion that dictatorship somehow promotes economic growth in poor countries.

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