The Democratic Transition

Murtin, Fabrice; Wacziarg, Romain

doi:10.3386/w17432

Cited by 26 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 29 publications

(43 reference statements)

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“…The more interesting issue especially for policy is the relationship between political dynasties and socio-4 economic outcomes. Studies that focused on the link between democracy and economic growth have still not settled the direction of causation (e.g., Burkhart 1997;Doucouliagos and Ulubasoglu 2008;Rodrik 2007;Lee 2005;Morrisson and Murtin 2009;Murtin and Wacziarg 2011;Plümper and Martin 2003) need to be differentiated from those that examine political dynasties within democratic regimes more specifically. With the possible exception Dal Bo et al (2009), Rossi (2009), andAsako et al (2010), and a few path breaking studies in the Philippines (e.g.…”

Section: Why Study Political Dynasties?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Inequality in democracy: Insights from an empirical analysis of political dynasties in the 15th Philippine Congress

Mendoza

Beja

Venida

et al. 2012

Philippine Political Science Journal

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This paper presents metrics to estimate the size of political dynasties in the 15th Congress of the Republic of the Philippines and analyze the relationship between political dynasty and socio-economic outcomes.Results show that political dynasties comprise 70 percent of jurisdiction-based legislators in the current Congress. They possess higher net worth and win elections by larger margins of victory compared to not political dynasties. Jurisdictions of political dynasties are characterized by lower standards of living, lower human development, and higher levels of deprivation and inequality. Keywords: democracy; political dynasty; Philippine CongressDemocracies are widely touted to be able to facilitate and sustain broader and more inclusive processes of economic and human development. Scholars associate political democracy with more predictable long-run economic growth, enhanced macroeconomic stability, more rational management of economic and political shocks and crises, and improved distributional outcomes.In theory, democracies guarantee equal voice in government decision-making through a range of mechanisms like one-person-one-vote, equality in political participation, and free speech. A democracy has the potential to cultivate an environment that is responsive to the needs of its citizens that, often, brings about higher levels of human capital investments and more inclusive  Corresponding author. E-mail: RUMENDOZA@AIM.EDU 2 and equitable social and economic outcomes. However, underdeveloped democratic institutions could be associated with weak political participation and thus produce, in some cases, political dynasties. Still, political dynasties can exist in any democracy regardless of its structure. A brief survey of the literature suggests that the share of legislators with dynastic links to past parliaments range from as low as 6 percent in the United States (Dal Bo et al. 2009) There is a view that the prevalence of political dynasties signals the deterioration of political equality and the resulting political monopoly leads to a deterioration of socioeconomic outcomes that prevent people from effectively communicating their needs to their government. Moreover, dynastic officials can use the powers of the state for self-serving interests without fear of replacement or administrative sanctions. They also skew the selection of political leaders, thereby favoring those with influence, possibly preventing the best and the brightest from serving in the government, and/or biasing policies in favor of certain groups. Yet, an alternative view suggests that political dynasties afford reformists an extended time horizons that enable more effective planning and implementation of policies with long-term goals. Politicians with shorter tenures often yield to populist demands and shun difficult but necessary reforms that pay-off in the future, and are critical to sustained, robust, and inclusive growth. It is also possible that dynastic politicians possess legacy-related motivations that are strongly l...

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Section: Why Study Political Dynasties?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Inequality in democracy: Insights from an empirical analysis of political dynasties in the 15th Philippine Congress

Mendoza

Beja

Venida

et al. 2012

Philippine Political Science Journal

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“…Differently, studies that contrast the level of democracy to different indices of economic liberalization (as in Giuliano et al 2010), or by using instrumental variables techniques (as in Eichengreen and Leblang, 2008) are more supportive of a positive role played by democracy. See also the recent contributions of Murtin and Wacziarg (2011) and Grosjean and Senik (2011). 2 A few empirical studies have investigated the effect of constitutions on agricultural policy, focusing especially on democracy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electoral rules, forms of government and redistributive policy: Evidence from agriculture and food policies

Olper

Raimondi

2013

Journal of Comparative Economics

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractWe investigate the effect of electoral rules and forms of government on public policy outcomes using a new dataset on agriculture and food policies from 74 countries over the 1960-2005 period. Using both cross-sectional and panel data analyses we find robust evidence that the specific nature of democratic institutions has important consequences for public policy. Proportional democracies and presidential democracies -compared to majoritarian and parliamentary democracies -give more public support to agriculture and less to food consumers. The magnitude of these constitutional effects are stronger for import-competitive sectors and staple food crops. The effects seem independent from the ideology orientation of governments.

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“…Recall that the literature on education and democracy is inconclusive: while Acemoglu et al (2005b) found that education has no explanatory power for democracy, Bobba andCoviello (2007), CastelloCliment (2008) and Murtin and Wacziarg (2014) found a positive and significant effect. Our results suggest that the effect might be there but does not prove to be highly robust to specification choices and instrumentation strategies.…”

Section: Panel Analysis With Sys-gmmmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We consider two sets of external instruments which have been commonly used in the migration literature, one based on a "zero-stage" pseudo-gravity model, and one exploiting climatic factors. Then, following Castello-Climent (2008), Bobba and Coviello (2007), and Murtin and Wacziarg (2014), we will compare our results with those obtained with the system-GMM estimator with internal instruments. The use of SYS-GMM enables us to better account for unobservable heterogeneity and persistence in the lagged dependent and other regressors.…”

Section: Identification Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Emigration and Democracy

et al. 2015

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International migration is an important determinant of institutions, not considered so far in the development literature. Using cross-sectional and panel estimation for a large sample of developing countries, we find that openness to emigration has a positive effect on home-country institutional development (as measured by standard democracy indices). The results are robust to a wide range of specifications and identification methods. Remarkably, the cross-sectional estimates are fully in line with the implied long-run relationship from dynamic panel regressions.

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The Democratic Transition

Cited by 26 publications

References 29 publications

Inequality in democracy: Insights from an empirical analysis of political dynasties in the 15th Philippine Congress

Inequality in democracy: Insights from an empirical analysis of political dynasties in the 15th Philippine Congress

Electoral rules, forms of government and redistributive policy: Evidence from agriculture and food policies

Emigration and Democracy

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