Democracy Builds Economies
BU researchers argue that better politics leads to better business
Most scholars zero in on the immediate effects of democratic government and conclude that democracy either impedes economic expansion or plays no role in the process. But John Gerring, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of political science and a faculty fellow at the University’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, suggests that long periods of democracy actually boost economic performance.
Supported by the Pardee Center and the Clinton Global Initiative, Gerring and a team of researchers are analyzing multinational data collected since 1900 showing that over time democratic governance fosters economic prosperity.
Pushing the idea, Gerring asks how the type of democratic rule — unitary or federal, parliamentary or presidential, proportional or majoritarian — impacts development.
In their book, A Centripetal Theory of Democratic Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2008), Gerring and coauthor Strom Thacker, a CAS associate professor of international relations and also a Pardee Center fellow, present a range of empirical tests that point to the benefits of “centripetal” democratic institutions. They conclude that governments balancing central authority and broad inclusion have more political, economic, and social gains than governments that fragment power among multiple institutions.
One way to imagine the centripetal system, say Gerring and Thacker, who also is director of BU’s Latin American Studies Program, is to think of a pyramid, with the electorate’s diverse interests at the wide base filtering up through committees and subcommittees of the legislature and finally narrowing at a pinnacle of central lawmaking authority. Successful governance is achieved when power is directed toward the center, not doled out to various organizations.
Gerring and Thacker argue that in contrast to the power-sharing system of government embraced by the United States, a centralist system like the one employed in the United Kingdom is more likely to result in increases in trade, longer life spans for citizens, and other benefits.
“We feel that the issues of governance are vastly important in improving the quality of life in the developing world and at the same time are not well understood,” says Gerring. “We’re not forecasting the future, but we’re looking at a causal relationship that will shape the future.”
This article originally appeared in the 2008 Research at Boston University magazine.
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