Modernization Thesis Reevaluated

The modernization thesis championed by political scientist Seymour Lipset argues that socioeconomic development would eventually lead to democratic development.

A new paper reevaluates the thesis and concludes:

Our overall conclusion is that the relationship between income and democracy and the widely-accepted modernization hypothesis need to be reevaluated, with much greater emphasis on the underlying factors affecting both variables and the political and economic development path of societies.

Our results indicate that countries have embarked upon different development paths, most likely at some critical junctures during their histories, and while some paths have led to democracy and prosperity, some others involved non-democracy and relative poverty.

Although democracy and prosperity coevolve along the virtuous development path, there is no evidence that income has a causal erect on democracy conditional on the development path.

Consequently, there is no reason to expect income changes over 5, 10 or even 20 year intervals observed during the post-war era to lead to signifcant changes in regimes above and beyond those experienced by the world as a whole.

Must Read for Democracy Advocates in HK

Bryan Caplan's excellent book, which demolishes the myth of the rational voter, is out. Go get it, now! Here is the introduction, here is the book's page, and here is Bryan's homepage at George Mason University. And yes, Bryan is a blogger too.

Once you are done with Bryan's book, you should also read Don Wittman's The Myth of Democratic Failure (which pushes the rational voter model to its logical extreme).

Here is an exchange between Don and Bryan over at Econ Journal Watch back in 2005.

Say No to Vision

HK's Chief Executive contender Alan Leong recently said:

"Mr. Tsang stands for 40 years of administrative experience as a civil servant. Administrative officiers do not need a vision. They only need to carry out the policies of the Governor and British rulers. It is administration with an elitist mindset.”

Read more here.

Indeed, one popular criticism of Donald Tsang (that is the same Tsang in the quote above), another contender's campagin slogan "I'll get the job done" is that it lacks vision.

I assume what both critics who attack Donald for his lack of vision and Alan Leong mean by the word vision is this: the "[u] nusual competence in discernment or perception; intelligent foresight". (Source)

According to this definition, I consider it a good thing that Donald lacks vision because I believe that neither Donald nor Alan has unusual competence in discernment or percetion nor do I believe that they have intelligent foresight.

BTW Mr Leong, isn't the whole point of having democracy is NOT to rely on particular attributes and characters of the person in charge of the government but rather on the institutions and procedures of the political system instead? If so, why do you want us to support you because you have vision? A vision which prompts you to try to force competition law, minimum wage, maximum working and similar visionary policies down our throat?

F. Hayek has repeatedly argued in his works that our primitive yearning for some wiseman to lead us has time and again resulted in the infringement of personal liberty and freedom.