The paper considers the transformation of the political system as countries pass through the Grand Transition from a poor developing country to a wealthy developed country. In the process most countries change from an authoritarian to a democratic political system. This is shown by using the Gastil democracy index from Freedom House. First, the basic pattern of correlations reveals that a good deal of the short- to medium-run causality appears to be from democracy to income. Then a set of extreme biogeographic instruments is used to demonstrate that the long-run causality is from income to democracy. The long-run result survives various robustness tests. We show how the Grand Transition view resolves the seeming contradiction between the long-run and the short- to medium-run effects.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by School of Economics and Management, University of Aarhus in its series Economics Working Papers with number
2008-15.
Find related papers by JEL classification: B25 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - Historical; Institutional; Evolutionary; Austrian O1 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: