Abstract
This chapter examines the development-democracy nexus in Asia-Pacific. The notion that democracy is a function of socio-economic modernization has been one of the most dominant theoretical frameworks in democratization studies. Using a data panel for 20 Asian countries, instrumenting for economic development and using two-stage least squares regressions to account for endogeneity between democracy and income, we find only a weak effect of economic development on the level of electoral democracy in the region. Furthermore, electoral democracy is not statistically associated with the level of economic development in Asia. Contrary to this, state capacity is a main driver of economic development, when controlling for country and year effects and the level of democracy as well as the interaction between democracy and state capacity. Finally, we find a positive link between rule of law and economic development in Asia, which is consistent with the existing empirical evidence derived from global samples.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Research Handbook on Democracy and Development |
| Subtitle of host publication | Elgar Handbooks in Development |
| Publisher | Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. |
| Pages | 228-249 |
| Number of pages | 22 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781788112659 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781788112642 |
| State | Published - 1 Jan 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© Gordon Crawford and Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai 2021.
