Regime Effects on Prosperity, Welfare, and Peace

Pippa Norris is the McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. In 2011, she was awarded, with Ronald Inglehart, Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science for “contributing innovative ideas about the relevance and roots of political culture in a global context, transcending previous mainstream approaches of research”. The paper that the two winners presented at the Johan Skytte Lecture at the University of Uppsala on 23 September 2011, has been published in new issue of Scandinavian Political Studies, with the title The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Understanding Human Security [PDF]

Norris has an important forthcoming book, to be released by Cambridge UP in fall 2012, entitled Making Democratic Governance Work: The Impact of Regimes on Prosperity, Welfare, and Peace. The book focuses on three questions: Does democratic governance has positive effect on economic prosperity? Does democracy accelerate progress toward social welfare and human development? And does it reduce conflict and generate peace?

As usual, Professor Norris has recently uploaded draft chapters of the forthcoming book on her website for comment. In chapter 2, she classifies four theoretical perspectives in contemporary debates on regime effects: i) Structuralist theories, that either deny any independent effects of regime type on development, or regard democracy as product of socio-economic development, and not the reverse (Lipset’s modernization theory). ii) Theories of democracy-promotion, that suggest prosperity, welfare, and peace are most likely achieved through democratic accountability, including Schumpeterian theories of competitive election like Meltzer and Richard’s, liberal democratic institutions’ constraints (Amartya Sen and others), and Lijphat’s theory of consensus democracy. iii) Theories of state-building: Huntington’s state-building thesis, World Bank’s thesis of ‘good governance’ for economic development, and Weber inspired idea of state’s bureaucratic capacity. iv) Unified theory, that combines democracy-promotion and state-building viewpoints, recognizing that both the process of strengthening democracy and state-building initiatives, working simultaneously, are necessary for successful development. Norris gives a systematic account of such a unified theory in her book.

“The study presents a new conceptual framework, and fresh empirical evidence drawn from many countries around the globe, to defend this argument. Multiple methods are used for analysis. The evidence suggests that it is the interaction of democracy and governance which is essential to making sustained progress on a wide range of development challenges facing the world.”