The Influence of Democracy on Economic Growth
The Influence of Democracy on Economic Growth
This brief is part of the Democracy Action Lab's "The Case for Democracy" series, which curates academic scholarship on democracy’s impacts across various domains of governance and development. Drawing from an exhaustive review of the literature, this analysis presents selected works that encompass significant findings and illustrate how the academic conversation has unfolded.
Democracies generally do not possess an intrinsic economic advantage over autocracies, but they tend to sustain less volatile economic growth. Scholarly debate concentrates on the causal link between democracy and economic development, seeing as this relationship can be context-dependent and heterogeneous across different forms of democracies and autocracies. However, stronger institutions of accountability and protections for economic rights in democracies have the potential to foster long-term GDP gains.