Do Democratic Transitions Produce Bad Economic Outcomes?

摘要

Several influential commentators have suggested recently that democratization in developing countries produces political instability, ethnic conflict, and poor economic outcomes. For instance, Robert D. Kaplan (2000 p. 62) states that "If a society is not in reasonable health, democracy can be not only risky but disastrous." Fareed Zakaria (2003 p. 98) points out that "although democracy has in many ways opened up African politics and brought people liberty, it has also produced a degree of chaos and instability that has actually made corruption and lawlessness worse in many countries." Amy Chua (2002 p. 124) argues that: "…in the numerous countries around the world with a market-dominant minority,…[a]dding democracy to markets has been a recipe for instability, upheaval, and ethnic conflagration." These authors buttress their claims with examples of democratic reforms that led to economic chaos and eventually a collapse back into autocracy. Such anecdotal evidence can be problematic from two perspectives. First, it is not clear how universal the pattern is. Perhaps the vast majority of other countries have had more successful transitions. For example, we rarely hear in these accounts about Mauritius and Botswana, two long-term African success stories that also happen to be democratic countries. Second, these anecdotal accounts leave the counterfactual unspecified. Perhaps countries would have been even worse off in the absence of democratic transitions.