"Although exceptional cases exist [East Asia], it is the preponderance of experience that should guide development policy [and democracies have a better record]."
I'm afraid that Siegle et al are missing the forest for the trees. The issue is not what kind of government these countries had, but the type of economy that the government supported. The Asian tigers committed themselves to introducing capitalism. India, a democracy, suffered from the "Hindu rate of growth" until the 1990s, when Monmohan Singh's reforms turned India capitalist. China, an autocracy, did not experience exponential growth until after Deng Xaioping's capitalist reforms.
Certainly I am cherry-picking examples. But I believe it's clear that countries with properly functioning capitalist systems develop fastest, regardless of the form of government. This is what really separates the former dictatorships of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore (still a one-party state), and Indonesia, from the regimes in North Korea, Laos, and Burma in terms of development.
- Jon
Comments
It seems to me tho, that China et al.--as Siegel Says--are exceptional. For the perponderence of developing nations the experience of the Asian Tigers is not applicable and thus provides a poor basis for shaping US policy.
The market doesn't fix all, especially if the country doesn't the necessary democraphtic, geography, or resources.
Are they exceptional? I would wager that the Asian tigers grew nearly as much, if not more, in absolute terms than all of their democratic counterparts combined over the same time period. Preponderance measured in terms of the quantity of countries is a rather arbitrary metric.
Furthermore, there are simply too many examples of states that industrialized very successfully under autocratic regimes. This includes some of the most conspicuous successes of the 19th (France, Germany, Japan) and the 20th centuries (the Asian Tigers). One might say that Britain and America are the exceptions.
I think the empirical evidence is on Siegle's side in this case. If you include the Asian Tigers, autocratic governments--on average--have only done as well as democratic ones and in the vast majority of cases have done worse. In this evaluation, the Asian Tigers pull a lot of slack for places like Somalia, Uzbekistan, etc. In Siegle's words:
"The data, compiled from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators from 1960 to the present, reveal a simple truth: low-income democracies have, on average, grown just as rapidly as low-income autocracies over the past 40 years. Outside of eastern Asia (about which more will be said later), the median per capita growth rates of poor democracies have been 50 percent higher than those of autocracies."
This is not to say that experience of the Asian Tigers should be disregarded, but it is in no way a viable model for American development efforts around the world.
I still disagree. Siegle is comparing rates, not absolute numbers. I could be wrong, but I would wager that East Asia accounted for a larger amount of the developing world's growth from 1960 to present than all other developing nations combined.
It's not helpful to lump Somalia with functioning autocratic regimes. It has no real government. This is the other main problem, you need to separate functioning autocracies from int'l basket cases (Somalia) and xenophobic dictatorships (North Korea). It makes no sense to put a country like the U.A.E. in the same category as Burma.
Overall, the sample size is way to small, and the categories are too general for a meaningful statistical analysis. Uzbekistan, for instance, should be compared with other completely landlocked countries that have little arable land and no natural resources.
An comparative study of similar nations would be much more useful.
