The consequences for prosperity, welfare and peace
Pippa Norris
Harvard and Sydney Universities www.pippanorris.com
New book for Cambridge, Sept 2012

1. Theoretical questions and debate
• Does democratic governance expand prosperity, welfare and peace?
2. Mixed research design and evidence
• Large N cross-national time series data 1984-2007
• Paired case comparisons
3. Overview of selected results
4. Conclusions and policy implications
– Democracy alone is not enough
– Simple logic, complex proof
– Need to strengthen democratic accountability and governance capacity for most effective development outcomes

How Regimes shape Prosperity, Welfare and Peace
New York: Cambridge University Press
Pippa Norris
Contents
I: Introduction
1.
Does democratic governance determine human security?
2.
Theories of regime effects
II: Comparing regimes
3.
The regime typology
4.
Analyzing regime effects
III: Development outcomes
5.
Prosperity
6.
Welfare
7.
Peace
IV: Conclusions
8.
Why regimes matter

• Intrinsic value of democratic governance is widely accepted for human rights
• But what is the instrumental impact of regime types on other development goals? Classic questions:
1. Is democratic governance good for economic prosperity?
2. Has this type of regime accelerated progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals, social welfare, and human development?
3. Does it generate a peace-dividend and reduce conflict at home?

• Recent decades have seen expanded investment to strengthen democracy and ‘good’ governance by international community and domestic stakeholders
• World Bank, UN, bilateral donors, NGOs
• E.g. Today UNDP spends $1.2 to 1.5bn annually on democratic governance
• Third-wave era has also witnessed dramatic changes in transitions from absolute autocracy and processes of democratization
• Have these changes generated significant benefits for human development? Not clear and timely to review evidence.

100,0
90,0
80,0
70,0
60,0
Chile
Venezuela
Gambia
Zimbabwe
Korea, Rep
Turkey
50,0
40,0
30,0
Turkey
Sudan
Korea, Rep
Venezuela
Gambia
Russia
Zimbabwe China
20,0
Russia China
Mongolia Sudan
10,0
1980,0 2010,0
Note: Change is monitored through Freedom House liberal democracy standardized index.
Source: Freedom House

0,900
0,800
0,700
0,600
0,500
0,400
0,300
0,200
0,100
Korea (Rep)
Korea (Rep)
Chile
Chile
El Salvador
China
Indonesia
India
El Salvador
Zambia
India
Liberia
DRC
Zimbabwe
Liberia
DRC
Zimbabwe
1980 2010
Note: Change is monitored through the UNDP 100-point Human Development Index.
Source: UNDP Human Development Report 2010.

• “Success is uneven within countries and regions.
• In 2015, more than 600 million people worldwide will still lack access to improved water sources, almost one billion will be living in dire poverty, and hunger will remain a global challenge.
• Mothers will continue to die needlessly in childbirth, and children will still suffer and die from preventable diseases due to lack of adequate sanitation or nutrition.
• Meanwhile, biodiversity loss continues apace and greenhouse gas emissions continue to pose a major threat to people and ecosystems.
• We need an agenda that is concrete, action-oriented and focused on poverty eradication, inclusive economic and social development, environmental sustainability and peace and security for all.” (Ban Ki Moon, EcoSoc 2 July 2012)
The MDG Development Report 2012 http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

• Does democratic governance matter for development?
• Vital for advocacy, strategic choice of developmental priorities, and achievement of MDGs
• Inconclusive and fragmented research literature
• Political science, welfare economics, and international relations
• Articles usually focus narrowly on one or two developmental indicators
• Many technical challenges confront analysts
• Poor conceptualization and weak theories
• Little understanding of the underlying theoretical logic linking democratic governance to human security
• Systematic bias in political science literature
• Extensive focus on liberal democracy but remarkably little on the concept and measures of governance capacity

Prosperity, welfare and peace

• Skeptics emphasize multiple ‘deep-drivers’ or fixed conditions of economic growth, human welfare, and peace
– Geography
• E.g. natural resources, physical capital, infrastructure, agricultural production, access to trade, technology, and communications, vulnerability to tropical diseases and natural disasters, physical area, spillover from interstate conflict.
– Social structures
• E.g. ethnic fractionalization, religious cultures, colonial histories, social inequalities, human capital, population size

• Przeworski et al (2000):
• Type of democratic or autocratic regime has no impact on prosperity, positive or negative
• Doucouliagos and Ulubasoglu (2008)
• Meta-review 84 empirical studies, same conclusions
• Ross (2004):
• Democracy has no impact on welfare outcomes like child and maternal mortality
• Mansfield and Snyder (2007)
• Transition from autocracy heightens risks of war and instability
• Lipset (1958)
• Democratic governance is the consequence, not the cause, of development (reverse causality)
• Jacob Zuma “You can’t eat democracy”

• Need to strengthen democratic governance, including elections held at an early stage in any peace-building and transition process
• Range of authors: Mort Halperin, Joseph Siegle, Michael Weinstein, Larry
Diamond, Thomas Carothers, Michael McCaul
• Why? Intrinsic and instrumental benefits
• Michael McCaul: “As a system of government, democracy has clear advantages over other kinds of regimes. Democracies represent the will of the people and constrain the power of the state. They avoid the worst kinds of economic disasters, such as famine, and the political horrors, such as genocide, that occur in autocracies. On average, democracies also produce economic development just as well as other forms of government.
Democracies also tend to provide for more stable government and more peaceful relations with other states compared to other regime types.
Finally, most people in the world want democracy.”

• Samuel Huntington (1968) :
– Development requires state-building first, expanding government capacity, order, stability, and security i.e. strong executive capacity is an essential precondition prior to democratic elections.
• Ideas revived during the last decade
– Robert Kaplan, Francis Fukuyama, Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder
• State-builders challenge strategic order not the ultimate normative desirability of democracy
• Strengthened by economists
– World Bank focus on ‘good governance’, the second generation neoliberal Washington consensus, and the ‘institutional turn’ in economics
(Douglas North) emphasizing property rights and rule of law (Rodrik)

• False choices:
– Need for simultaneous balance in strengthening both democracy and governance within certain structural constraints
• Liberal democracy:
– Channel for public demands and state accountability
• Bureaucratic governance:
– Capacity to respond to these demands with provision of public goods and services

Democratic
Accountability
PUBLIC
DEMANDS
:
CYCLICAL FEEDBACK LOOP
EXECUTIVE
AND
LEGISLATORS
PUBLIC SECTOR
GOVERNANCE:
Governance
Capacity
POLICY
OUTPUTS
POLICY
OUTCOMES:
STRUCTURAL CONDITIONS

EXPANDED
CAPACITY
LIMITED
CAPACITY
RESTRICTED VOICE AND
ACCOUNTABILITY
INCLUSIVE VOICE AND
ACCOUNTABILITY

RESTRICTED VOICE AND
ACCOUNTABILITY
INCLUSIVE VOICE AND
ACCOUNTABILITY
EXPANDED
CAPACITY
Eg Singapore Eg Chile
LIMITED
CAPACITY
Eg Somalia Eg Ghana

DEMOCRACY
RESTRICTED VOICE AND
ACCOUNTABILITY
INCLUSIVE VOICE AND
ACCOUNTABILITY
EXPANDED
CAPACITY
Bureaucratic autocracies
(Mixed performance)
Bureaucratic democracies
(Most effective performance)
LIMITED
CAPACITY
Patronage autocracies
(Least effective performance)
Patronage democracies
(Mixed performance)

•
– The capacity of regime authorities to perform functions essential for collective well-being.
– Max Weber: The capacity of the state to protect citizens living within its territory and to manage the delivery of public goods and services
•
– PRSG’s Quality of Government index combines three components: (1) Bureaucratic Quality; (2) Lack of corruption, and; (3) Law and Order.
– 100-pt standardized continuous scale 1984-2004
– Also dichotomized into patronage and bureaucratic states

•
– The capacity of people to influence regime authorities within their nation-state
– Robert Dahl’s polyarchy
•
– Freedom House index of political rights and civil liberties (from 1972-date)
– 100-pt standardized continuous scale
– Dichotomized into autocracies and democracies

Bureaucratic autocracies
Bureaucratic democracies
2008
Patronage autocracies
Patronage democracies

Bureaucratic autocracies
Bureaucratic democracies
1984
Patronage autocracies
Patronage democracies

• Economic growth
– Mean annual growth of income per capita in purchasing power parity from the chain series index of the Penn
World Tables
• Human development
– Six MDG indicators
– Life expectancy; child mortality; health (TB); gender equality in education; education opportunities; and the
UNDP human development index.
• Peace and conflict
– Measures of civil wars from the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict
Dataset V4.0

• Economic
– Trade flows
–
Income (Per capita GDP)
• Geographic
– Location (Latitude)
–
Area size (Sq.Km)
– Natural resources (Oil/gas rents)
• Social Structure
– Linguistic fractionalization
–
Religious fractionalization
– Human capital (secondary schooling)
–
Logged population size
– Internal conflict
• Cultural traditions
– Muslim society
–
British colonial legacy
• Global trends
– Year

• Reciprocal causation
• Omitted variable bias in many models
• Poor conceptualization and measurement error
• Case selection bias
• Non-random missing data
• Need mixed design:
– Large-N panel (county-year) with OLS regression and panel corrected standard errors
– Thick case studies

Note: Mean annual growth of income per capita in purchasing power parity from the chain series index of the Penn World Tables, 1984-2007.

1a 1b 1c
Liberal democracy Bureaucratic governance
Democratic governance b p PCSE b p PCSE b p PCSE
Liberal democracy (FH) -.004
.003
.023 * .014
Bureaucratic governance
(ICRG)
-.003
.007
.032 * .016
Note: The models present the unstandardized beta coefficients and the statistical significance of Ordinary
Least Squares linear regression models with Panel Corrected Standard Errors. The models control for prior geographic, economic, social structural, cultural traditions, and global trends . The dependent variable is income per capita in purchasing power parity from the chain series index of the Penn World Tables. *** p
<0.001, ** p <0 .001, * p < 0.05. Number of observations 5,767 N countries 95, N of years 20.

Note: Development is monitored through the UNDP 100-point Human Development Index.
Source: UNDP Human Development Report.

140
120
100
80
60
121
89
73
52
40
20
0
Patronage autocracy Patronage democracy Bureaucratic autocracy Bureaucratic democracy
Child mortality is the ratio of deaths for children under five years old per 1000 live births 1990-2007(MDG indicators). Developing societies are defined as those with per capita income of less than $10,000, measured by income per capita in purchasing power parity from the chain series index of the Penn World Tables.

40
30
20
10
70
60
50
38
53 53
61
0
Patronage autocracy Patronage democracy Bureaucratic autocracy Bureaucratic democracy
Educational opportunities: the gross male and female enrollment in secondary schools as a ratio of the corresponding population age group, 1984-2007 (World Development Indicators/UNESCO). Developing
societies are defined as those with per capita income of less than $10,000, measured by income per capita in purchasing power parity from the chain series index of the Penn World Tables. Coef of Assoc .376***

90
85
80
75
100
95
81
93
90
97
70
Patronage autocracy Patronage democracy Bureaucratic autocracy Bureaucratic democracy
Gender equality in education: the ratio of girls to boys enrolled in primary and secondary schools
(WDI/UNESCO);. Developing societies are defined as those with per capita income of less than $10,000, measured by income per capita in purchasing power parity from the chain series index of the Penn World
Tables. Coef of Assoc .412***

Note: The mean levels of internal, interstate, and internationalized conflict experienced by type of regime, 1984-2004. Source: Calculated from the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset

• We need to consider both democratic accountability and governance capacity
• The analysis confirms that overall, even with multiple controls, bureaucratic democracies usually demonstrate the best record of development, while patronage autocracies commonly the worst performers
• Yet not wholly consistent across diverse indices; depends, in part, on technical ‘fixes’
• Paired cases illustrate underlying processes and dynamics

•
– Need far better measures of governance capacity
• Teorell and Rothstein
• Fukuyama
•
– Need to balance programs and consider the interaction of democracy and governance
– Democracy alone or governance alone are not enough

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