Democracy and development

Is there institutional incompatibility

Bibliographic Data

ID6254360
AuthorsAdrian Leftwich (University of York, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume12
Issue5
Pages686-703
Publication date2005-12-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueDemocratization (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1351-0347 • E-ISSN: 1743-890X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13510340500322173
OpenAlexW2128470735
LanguageEN
Citations received15

Since the end of the Cold War, two central foreign policy goals have risen to the top of the agenda of Western governments and development agencies. On the one hand, the reduction of poverty has increasingly dominated development thinking. Pro-poor economic growth, it is argued, is essential for these goals to be met. Moreover, it is also widely held that such growth and development is essential for reducing political instability, insecurity and conflict by expanding the arc of stakeholders in developing economies and deepening economic and political ties between countries. But democratization, on the other hand, remains a policy priority, not only for the usual moral reasons, but also because of the now widely accepted thesis that consolidated democracies are both more stable and also less likely to engage in conflict with each other. The problem, however, is that whatever the merits or limitations of these goals may be, there are also very complicated and potentially compromising structural tensions between the institutions required for stable and consolidated democracy and those required for rapid, effective and sustained growth and development. This argument is advanced here by looking at both development and democracy from an institutional point of view

Argument (complex analysis · Democracy · Democratization · Development economics · Economic system · Economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Poverty · Poverty reduction · Income, Poverty, and Inequality · Law

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