Democracy And Economic Development: Studies On The Logic Of Adam Przeworski’s Research

The current era is the age of democracy. With the value of democracy is gettingmore and more recognition and the establishment of democracy all over the world, thetransition to democracy and sustainable democracy is becoming the focus of people’sattention, still be just unfolding. And the correlation between democracy and economicdevelopment is one most important topic of the democratization theory researches.Because of the complexity of the relationship between economic development anddemocratic practice in different countries and regions, there are many research findings.However, the conclusion has some, very limited. There are even full of confrontationand antagonism intense between different researches. Even so, the research of therelationship between democracy and economic development still has the importanttheory value and practical significance. On this paper, the relationship betweendemocracy and economic development is the main research subject. Adam Przeworski,a leading figure in the research of the transition to democracy and sustainabledemocracy in America, is playing an important role. The paper mainly fullyinvestigates and correctly interprets the logic of Przeworski’s research, which inheritsthe previous studies and has some implications for the future. This not only reflects thecontinuity of the research of the relationship between democracy and economicdevelopment, also can enhance the domestic academic researchers to understand andcorrectly interpret Przeworski’s research and points.This paper mainly includes six parts, introduction and conclusion excluded. Partone, background and research methods of Przeworski’s research; Part two, premise of Przeworski’s research: the definition of democracy and economic development, and theclassification of regimes; Part three, inspection and reflection on Lipset’s proposition;Part four, one dimension of Przeworski’s research: impact of economic development ondemocracy; Part five, the other dimension of Przeworski’s research: impact ofdemocracy on economic development; Part six, evaluation of Przeworski’s research.The first part mainly introduces the background and research methods ofPrzeworski’s research. The background of Przeworski’s research is the premise tounderstand and evaluate his research, which is including the rise of the1970’s newworldwide democracy tide, the development of new classical economics and the rise ofnew keynesian economics, the prosperity of behaviorism and the rise of positivepolitical theory in America. What’s more, he has numerous research results and hisacademic experience is very rich, which can help us to understand his views on therelationship between democracy and economic development. Besides, comparativeapproach, qualitative and quantitative research methods, rational choice theory andgame theory are his characteristics of methodology.To definite of democracy and economic development, and class the regimes ofregimes is the premise of Przeworski’s statistical analysis, which is the main contentsof the second part. Przeworski considers the democracy as the political regime, inwhich the leaders are voted by the competition elections. And it contains two coreelements:“government” and “contestation”. Democratization is the transition todemocracy, including the reform of political system and economic system. Only whenthe democracy becomes to the self-enforcement system arrangement, the democracy isconsolidated. The main elements of judgment of economic development are per capitaincome, income inequality, the way of economic growth, economic crisis and so on.Besides, Przeworski divides the regimes into democracies and dictatorships.The third part focuses on Przeworski’s inspection and reflection on Lipset’sproposition. In his view, Lipset adopts the static and endogenous research thought,which can not prove that economic development has resulted in the emergence ofdemocracy. Instead, we should observe the possibility of established system’stransformation as the growth of economic development, which is a dynamical and exogenous research thought.The fourth part reviews one dimension of Przeworski’s research: impact ofeconomic development on democracy. On the basis of the data statistics, Przeworskicalculates total number of annual observations of democracy and authoritarianism, theprobability of any regime transition, the probability and number of transition fromauthoritarianism to democracy, the probability and number of transition fromdemocracy to authoritarianism by lagged per capita income. His research tell us that,economic development can not explain the emergence of democracy, but conducive todemocracy continued. Even on the face of the economic crisis, the expansion of thestatistical time and range, his conclusions are not changed.The fifth part reviews the other dimension of Przeworski’s research: impact ofdemocracy on economic development. He summarizes previous studies, and finds thatpolitics does matter, but regimes do not capture the relevant differences. And it doesnot seem to be democracy or authoritarianism per se that makes the difference butsomething else. And on the base of statistical analysis, he found no convincingevidence that democracy was conducive to economic growth. That means that there isno trade-off between democracy and development. However, under a democraticsystem economic development mode is better than which in the non democraticcountries.The last part is the evaluation of Przeworski’s research. A series of Przeworski’sconclusions break the common sense of economic determinism in the emergence ofdemocracy, show the shortage of endogenous research and the advantage of theexogenous in the interpretation of causality. Przeworski’s study is a two-wayrelationship between democracy and economic development, economic crisis andpolitical instability are also considered. In addition, he has been trying to correct theselection bias, which improves the scientific standard research. At the other hand, hisstatistical analysis only provides the feasibility of understanding the relationship, andthere are some limitations in analysis method, such as the selection bias, valueneutrality and so on. Otherwise, his definition of democracy is based on westernexperience, and the conclusions are based on historical experience, which may not applicable to the entire world’s democracy. Besides, there is no doubt that theconclusions of his study are also a good reference to the practice of politics andeconomy in the world today.In fact, the complex realities and abundant research results tell us, the realrelationship between politics and economy can not be explained by the puremathematical statistics nor by the simple theories. We should pay more attention tosome special regions or the specific countries, not to summarize the universal rules.Only based on national conditions, democratic system and economic system reformcan be fit and be increased, and the social welfare can be promoted.This is also thesignificant enlightenment on our przeworski. And this is our big significance thoughthe research of the relationship between democracy and economy development andstudy on Przeworski’s research.