Voice and Growth: Was Churchill Right?

Peter Lindert

No 9749, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The debate over whether political democracy is the least bad regime, as Churchill once said, remains unresolved because history has been ignored or misread, and because recent statistical studies have not chosen the right tests. Using too little historical information, and mistaking formal democratic rules for true voice, has understated the gains from spreading political voice more equally. This paper draws on a deeper history, reinterpreting five key experiences to show how the institutional channels linking voice and growth are themselves evolving with the economy. Up to about the early nineteenth century, the key institutional link was property rights and contract enforcement. Since the early nineteenth century, the human-investment channel has assumed an ever-greater role. This trend will probably continue. A telltale sign of damage to growth from elite rule is the under-investment of public funds in egalitarian human capital especially primary schooling, relative to historical norms for successful economies.

JEL-codes: H11 N40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-dev and nep-pbe
Note: DAE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (47)

Published as Lindert, Peter H. "Voice And Growth: Was Churchill Right?," Journal of Economic History, 2003, v63(2,Jun), 315-350.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9749.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Voice and Growth: Was Churchill Right? (2003)
Working Paper: Voice and Growth: Was Churchill Right? (2003)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9749

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9749

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().