current controversies: democratization, governance and development

Question 1

“both democratic and authoritarian countries…” (Khan)

Answer 1

both democratic and authoritarian countries have experienced both economic boom and stagnation

Question 2

How is political contestation organised in developing countries? and what is this connected to? (Khan)

Answer 2

• through the mobilizations of patron-client factions, rather than through the mobilization of class or economic interest groups
• connected to the underdevelopment of economies, the limited scope of viable capitalist economies in developing societies and the inevitable social transformations that these societies are experiencing

Question 3

What can democracy potentially do? and example (Khan)

Answer 3

• In some cases democracy can manage conflicts
• India, factional politics operates through democratic institutions, allowing country to continue transition to capitalist economy

Question 4

What are the three major arguements linking democracy to more efficient operation of markets and states? (Khan)

Answer 4

• Information based arguments
• democracy as a regime that ensures efficient institutional change
• democracies as systems that ensure political and economic stability

Question 5

summarise information based arguements for democracy (Khan)

Answer 5

-the competition for office reveals information for current and future policy-makers that could not otherwise have been generated

the power of patron-client factions in developing country democracies can help to explain why electoral competition does not in general result in government preferences being set by the poor even through they constitute huge majorities

-some examples of pro-poor state agendas eg kerala in India

Question 6

summarise democracy as regime that ensures efficient institutional change argument (Khan)

Answer 6

• argument that economic efficiency requires the evolution of economic institutions and property rights to reduce transaction costs in the market. All institutional changes involve winners and losers, most efficient if those who win, win more than the losers lose
• Douglas North argues democracy can achieve this, by reducing the cost of political negotiation, could help sort out comepnsations to losers to create more effective government
• however very large differences in power of factions, there is no necessity for winners to offer compensation to losers

Question 7

summarise democracies as systems that ensure political and economic stability argument (Khan)

Answer 7

-democracies provide rules for the smooth transfer of power, can reduce taxation

Question 8

What is one uncontested piece of evidence? (Khan)

Answer 8

richer countries are more likely to be democracies than poor ones

Question 9

What is there tension between according to Khan?

Answer 9

between the logic of rational bureaucratic rule and the logic of political leadership and charisma operating through democratic process

Question 10

what is the key characteristic of the neo-patrimonial state? (Khan)

Answer 10

-the personalization of power

Question 11

“argument that politically insulated policymaking…” (Armijo)

Answer 11

“is superior to chaotic populism for accomplishing the fiscal retrenchment that seems to be an essential element of shrinking trade and budget deficits

Question 12

What’s the standard conception of Brazil’s history with inflation? (Armijo)

Answer 12

• attributed issues to weak state
• inflation exploded in late 80s due to return of civilian rule and democracy, wosened issues of weak state unable to stand up to powerful societal interests
• successful stabilisation of 90s seen as case of acute crisis eventually convincing social actors to cooperate in solving a dilemma of collective action

Question 13

what’s the alternative interpretation of Brazil’s history with inflation? (Armijo)

Answer 13

• long history of inflation reflects the existence of a sturggle for shares among societal interests and a weak state unable or unwilling to solve the collective action problem of sharing out the sacrifices necessary to balance the public budget
• inflation principally resulted from politically motivated subsidies and spending that incumbents engaged in to woo their core partisan constituents
• explosion of hyperinflation can be attributed to redmocratization, however stabilisation was also a result of redemocratization, as it altered the inventives to incumbents

Question 14

what are the continuities between all 3 political regimes of Brazil? (Armijo)

Answer 14

• all three incorporated as political actors, economic elites, including both rural landowners and urban capitalists, plus a hetrogenous middle income group of liberal professionals, white collar workers and small entrepreneurs and shopkeepers
• presidents deployed a mix of distributive policies that in aggregate result in recurrent, persistent inflation
• compensating favoured groups for their direct costs from inflationary growth proved politically easier than implementing and retaining policies to cut fiscal deficits and public debt

Question 15

“A set of modern authoritarian states…” (Barma)

Answer 15

“have experienced astonishing economic growth and prosperity while simultaneously restricting political freedoms”

Question 16

how do open authoritarian regimes deliver economic success to their populations? (Barma)

Answer 16

through versions of state controlled capitalism and excel at plugging into the international system in ways that allow them to benefit from global connectivity while retaining their grip on domestic power

Question 17

What is peculiar about the international system as it exists today? (Barma)

Answer 17

-it’s conducive to the survival and relative success of a subset of authoritarian states by articulating the ways in which open authoritarian regimes use their ties to the international system to strengthen their rule at home

Question 18

how do open authoritarian regimes excel at domestic control? (Barma)

Answer 18

• through a strategy of socio-political leapfrogging, bypassing less efficient or failed social, economic and domestic political policies for more successful ones
• open authoritarian regimes take from the liberal world a set of successful policies and ideas that have been vetted through democratic checks and balances while at the same time free riding on the international capitalist system

Question 19

what does the concept of open authoritarian regimes reject? (Barma)

Answer 19

-the notion that the process of globalization and interconnectvitiy are necessarily homogenizing