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Democracy and Development: Rejecting the Extremes
By Kaufmann | July 18, 2008
We recently released the new Governance Matters study, with its accompanying set of Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), covering 212 countries since 1996. It is no secret that this research project that I started with Aart Kraay over a decade ago is not uncontroversial, having generated debate among academics, some government officials, and within the World Bank. The data is widely used by civil society, researchers and reformists in governments, and we, as well as many academics, have also used it for research applications in studying governance and development.
With a particular focus on one dimension of governance –the political one– around the same time a brief article of mine rejecting extreme interpretations of the link between democracy and development was published in the ejournal USA (link here). Becoming a formal democracy does not necessarily result in much faster development in the short term…
Yet it is not the case that democracy, broadly interpreted, does not make a difference for economic development. I argue that if we take a broader interpretation of democracy, including ‘voice’, civil liberties and democratic accountability (departing from focusing only on whether formal elections are held, or only whether there is more than one political party), then the evidence points to a causal link with a more robust, shared and sustained economic development path, particularly in the longer term. And Le Monde published an opinion piece by its economic editor relating it to this work (here, in French; and for an opinion blog on the Le Monde piece and this work, here–in English).
Actually, for extreme cases there may not be any need for complex research. It suffices to be well informed about a country, and not to fear to speak up about it. Witness the tragedy that has beeen transpiring in Zimbabwe, for instance, the country that has underwent the most dramatic decline in governance according to our governance indicators (WGI). As a result Zimbabwe has traversed backwards, experiencing massive economic undevelopment, with direst consequences for its own people.
It is rewarding to be writing here again. Due to the confluence of simultaneous events, for the first time since I started my personal blog I did not blog for a while, which I regret. Not that I was idle, as indicated in some of the above activities. Further, we also launched the World Bank blog on governance (”Governance Matters”). And speaking about the World Bank and democracy, from its own homepage one finds now a podcast on the state of democracy around the world (here).
I am pleased to be back here, intending to blog regularly again.
Topics: Aid Effectiveness, Corruption, Measurement Frontiers, Transparency, Voice and Human Rights | |
September 19th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
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