2005/04/01 by John Gerring, Philip Bond, Philip L. Bond +2 · 583 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Argument (complex analysis) #Capital (architecture) #Culture, Economy, and Development Studies #Democracy #Development economics #Economic Policies and Impacts #Economic growth #Economic system #Economics #Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth #History #Human capital #Law #Perspective (graphical) #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Positive economics #Statistics #Stock (firearms) #Variety (cybernetics)
paper · doi:10.1353/wp.2006.0002
published in World Politics 57(3), 323-364 (Cambridge University Press)
openalex publication_date 2005/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Recent studies appear to show that democracy has no robust association with economic growth. Yet all such work assumes that the causal effect of democracy can be measured by a country's regime status in a particular year (T), which is correlated with its growth performance in a subsequent period (T+l). The authors argue that democracy must be understood as a stock, rather than a level, measure. That is, a country's growth performance is affected by the number of years it has been democratic, in addition to the degree of democracy experienced during that period. In this fashion, democracy is reconceptualized as a historical, rather than a contemporary, variable—with the assumption that long-run historical patterns may help scholars to understand present trends. The authors speculate that these secular-historical influences operate through four causal pathways, each of which may be understood as a type of capital: physical capital, human capital, social capital, and political capital. This argument is tested in a crosscountry analysis and is shown to be robust in a wide variety of specifications and formats.