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Econ Decline--Democracy

Increasing wealth is the only way to produce democracy, several empirical claims prove.


Stelzer, American economist who is the U.S. economic and business columnist for the Sunday Times, 94

[Irwin,“A question of linkage: capitalism, prosperity, democracy…” URL: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2751/is_n35/ai_15353275/. DA: 7/14/11]bg.


The simultaneous explosion of economic growth in still-authoritarian China and economic collapse in increasingly democratic Russia rekindles an old debate concerning the relationship between democracy, capitalism, free markets, and economic development. There is little doubt that the economy and the polity interact with each other, but the nature of that interaction is elusive. We begin with the conventional, conservative formulation. Crudely stated, it goes something like this. Market capitalism is the greatest engine for economic development the world has ever seen, what Peter Berger calls a "horn of plenty that heaped...immense material wealth and an entrepreneurial class, on the countries in which it originated." By creating a thrusting entrepreneurial class, impatient with government restrictions on its adventures, and a middle class clamoring for consumer goods, education and choice, capitalism creates counterpoises to government authority, eventually forcing the acceptance of democratic institutions. In short, by producing economic wealth and an entrepreneurial class, capitalism inevitably produces democracy. And since democracies don't start wars or have expansionist proclivities--forget, for the moment, Theodore Roosevelt and imperialist Britain--capitalist-democratic development contributes to security and to world peace. There is much to be said for this view, especially that portion that relates prosperity to market capitalism. Certainly, it seems to be validated by our own recent experience. Entrepreneurial capitalism became more dominant in the America of Ronald Reagan than it had been before, and job growth and record-breaking prosperity followed. In Britain, Margaret Thatcher reversed almost four decades of socialism--only the pace, but not the direction, of increasing government involvement in economic affairs changed when pre-Thatcher Tories alternated with Labour as Her Majesty's ministers--and changed her country from the sick man of Europe into one positioned for long-term, non-inflationary growth. Meanwhile, the Soviet economy was shown to be like the Wizard of Oz--an imposing facade, but impotent and powerless at its core. Put these events together and you have an unassailable proof that capitalism produces a level of economic welfare that a planned economy simply cannot emulate. Add to that the apparent relationship between capitalism, prosperity, and democracy, and you have reason for self-satisfaction with the American political-economic system, at least in the broad. After all, in recent years a more-or-less free market capitalism in Chile, South Korea and Taiwan has produced, first, prosperity and, then, democratization. In Russia it may be the other way around: democratization (glasnost) preceded economic restructuring (perestroika). No matter: it all comes out well in the end--capitalism, democracy and prosperity march hand-in-hand into a bright, and therefore secure, future. Knowledge (or faith) that this is so informs several aspects of domestic and foreign policy.

Democratic societies fail when economies do, empirics prove.


Remmer, Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Remmer joined the Duke faculty in 2001 as a professor of Political Science, 91.

[Karen L. Remmer. “The Political Impact of Economic Crisis in Latin America in the 1980s”. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1963850.pdf. DA: 7/14/11]bg


The comparative politics literature is replete with analyses of the relationship between economic conditions and democratic politics. The research is severely bifurcated, however, with scholars specializing in the study of different world regions asking very different sets of theoretical questions. For students of West European and U.S. politics, the electoral implications of economic performance have been a major concern, with debate focused on such issues as the existence of a "political business cycle" or the relative strength of economic and noneconomic voting (e.g., Alt and Chrystal 1983; Beck 1982; Bellucci 1984; Eulau and Lewis-Beck 1985; Franz 1986; Hibbs and Fassbender 1981; Lewis-Beck1 988; Tufte 1978;V isser and Wijnhoven 1990; Whiteley 1986). For analysts of Latin America and other parts of the Third World, on the other hand, electoral issues have been of secondary. interest. Scholarly attention has focused instead on the linkage between economic conditions and democratic breakdown, with theoretical controversy revolving around such questions as the relationship betweene conomicu nderdevelopmenat nd coups d'6tat (O'Kane 1981, 1983; Londregan and Poole 1990; McGowan and Johnson 1984; Midlarsky and Tanter 1967; Putnam 1967), the political implications of economic dependency (Cardoso and Faletto 1979; Evans 1979), and the nexus between the exhaustion of import substitution industrialization and the rise of bureaucratic authoritarianism (Collier 1979; O'Donnell 1973, 1978; Remmer and Merkx 1982). Whereas hypotheses about politics in the North Atlantic have been formulated predominantly with reference to conditions of relative economic prosperity and stability, the political impact of economic crisis and deprivation have figured prominently in this second body of literature. South, the existing theoretical division of labor has left comparativists with an impoverished understanding of the impact of economic conditions on democratic governance. Those studying electoral outcomes have largely ignored the impact of economic crises and developed empirical generalizationst hat apply to but a limited range of economic conditions. Those emphasizing the political significance of economic crises, on the other hand, have devoted little attention to elections. Zimmermann and Saalfeld, whose work represents a major exception to broader research trends, recently underlined this division of labor when they characterized the comparative analysis of the breakdown of European democracy in the 1930s as "among the most underresearched areas in political science" (1988, 305). The same might be said of the comparative study of electoral outcomes in the Third World. Inasmuch as a key purpose of comparative research is to define "the limits of generalization by specifying the conditions under which hypotheses are valid" (Antal, Dierkes, and Weiler 1987, 14), bridging the theoretical chasm dividing research on the political implications of economic conditions into two distinct bodies of literature is likely to yield significant dividends. This study attempts to take a preliminary step in this direction by addressing a series of questions about the electoral effects of economic crisis: Do the political effects of major economic setbacks parallel the effects of minor ones? Do generalizationsa bout the link between economic conditions and electoral outcomes fit the political experience of nonOECD nations? What factors explain varying political responses to crisis conditions? Economic Crisis and Politics in Latin America To link the study of economic crisis with research on democratic elections, the subsequent analysis focuses specifically upon the Latin American experience of the 1980s. During that decade, the region underwent a far-reaching process of political transformation that resulted in the largest and most extended series of competitive elections in its entire history. Simultaneously, however, Latin America was struck by its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Following Mexico's mid-1982 declaration of financial insolvency, countries throughout the region began facing acute problems in servicing relatively high levels of accumulated debt with only limited access to fresh external finance. Living standards and investment capacity plummeted in response. As the 1980s drew to a close, the average per capita product of Latin America was 8% lower than at the beginning of the decade, average inflation had surgedt o the unprecedentedle vel of nearly 1,000%, and the net transfer of resources abroad was continuing at an annual rate of U.S. $25 billion (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean 1989; hereafter ECLA). With few exceptions, these economic trends provoked regional specialists to paint a dismal picture of the future of Latin American democracy. Electoral pressures have been seen as undermine the capacity of democratic governments to implement the policies necessary to cope with economic crisis, while lowered living standards, high levels of inflation, and other economic difficulties associated with the net transfer of resources abroad have been linked with the prospect of declining support for democratic rule (e.g., Inter-AmericanD ialogue 1989, ix).

This solves all impacts


Diamond, hoover institution senior fellow, 95

(Larry Diamond, Hoover Institution senior fellow, co-editor of the Journal of Democracy, December 1995, A Report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, “Promoting Democracy in the 1990s: Actors and Instruments, Issues and Imperatives,” http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm)

OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically “cleanse” their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.


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