Development and Democracy confirms the robust relationship between levels of economic development and democracy, but suggests that globalization is a key variable in determining the tenuous nature of this relationship in the periphery of the world economy. It raises new questions about the role of social classes in democratization, and points to the importance of including the nature of the state as a factor in the study of democratization. A further important finding is that countries with mixed legal systems correlate less positively with democracy than do countries with more homogenous legal systems. Moreover, Development and Democracy shows conclusively that the way researchers design their studies has a major impact on their findings.

Examines impact of political regimes on economic development between 1950 and 1990.

Hidden behind the much-touted success story of India’s emergence as an economic superpower is another, far more complex narrative of the nation’s recent history, one in which economic development is frequently countered by profoundly unsettling, and often violent, political movements. In Democracy against Development, Jeffrey Witsoe investigates this counter-narrative, uncovering an antagonistic relationship between recent democratic mobilization and development-oriented governance in India. Witsoe looks at the history of colonialism in India and its role in both shaping modern caste identities and linking locally powerful caste groups to state institutions, which has effectively created a postcolonial patronage state. He then looks at the rise of lower-caste politics in one of India’s poorest and most populous states, Bihar, showing how this increase in democratic participation has radically threatened the patronage state by systematically weakening its institutions and disrupting its development projects. By depicting democracy and development as they truly are in India—in tension—Witsoe reveals crucial new empirical and theoretical insights about the long-term trajectory of democratization in the larger postcolonial world.

Technology, Development, and Democracy examines the growing role of the Internet in international affairs, from a source of mostly officially sanctioned information, to a venue where knowledge is often merged with political propaganda, rhetoric and innuendo. The Internet not only provides surfers with up-to-the-minute stories, including sound and visual images, and opportunities to interact with one another and experts on international issues, but also enables anyone with access to a computer, modem, and telephone line to influence international affairs directly. What does this portend for the future of international politics? The contributors respond by providing theoretical perspectives and empirical analyses for understanding the impact of the communications revolution on international security, the world political economy, human rights, and gender relations. Internet technologies are evaluated as sources of change or continuity, and as contributors to either conflict or cooperation among nations. While the Internet and its related technologies hold no greater, certain prospect for positive change than previous technological advances, they arguably do herald significant advances for democracy, the democratization process, and international peace.

Nicholas Copeland sheds new light on rural politics in Guatemala and across neoliberal and post-conflict settings in The Democracy Development Machine. This historical ethnography examines how governmentalized spaces of democracy and development fell short, enabling and disfiguring an ethnic Mayan resurgence. In a passionate and politically engaged book, Copeland argues that the transition to democracy in Guatemalan Mayan communities has led to a troubling paradox. He finds that while liberal democracy is celebrated in most of the world as the ideal, it can subvert political desires and channel them into illiberal spaces. As a result, Copeland explores alternative ways of imagining liberal democracy and economic and social amelioration in a traumatized and highly unequal society as it strives to transition from war and authoritarian rule to open elections and free-market democracy.The Democracy Development Machine follows Guatemala's transition, reflects on Mayan involvement in politics during and after the conflict, and provides novel ways to link democratic development with economic and political development. Thanks to generous funding from Virginia Tech and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other Open Access repositories.

Despite three decades of preoccupation with development in Africa, the economies of most African nations are still stagnating or regressing. For most Africans, incomes are lower than they were two decades ago, health prospects are poorer, malnourishment is widespread, and infrastructures and social institutions are breaking down. An array of factors have been offered to explain the apparent failure of development in Africa, including the colonial legacy, social pluralism, corruption, poor planning and incompetent management, limited in-flow of foreign capital, and low levels of saving and investment. Alone or in combination, these factors are serious impediments to development, but Claude Ake contends that the problem is not that development has failed, but that it was never really on the agenda. He maintains that political conditions in Africa are the greatest impediment to development. In this book, Ake traces the evolution and failure of development policies, including the IMF stabilization programs that have dominated international efforts. He identifies the root causes of the problem in the authoritarian political structure of the African states derived from the previous colonial entities. Ake sketches the alternatives that are struggling to emerge from calamitous failure--economic development based on traditional agriculture, political development based on the decentralization of power, and reliance on indigenous communities that have been providing some measure of refuge from the coercive power of the central state. Ake's argument may become a new paradigm for development in Africa.

Comparing the welfare states of Latin America, East Asia and Eastern Europe, the authors trace the origins of social policy in these regions to political changes in the mid-20th century, and show how the legacies of these early choices are influencing welfare reform following democratization and globalization.

Several scholars have written about how authoritarian or democratic political systems affect industrialization in the developing countries. There is no literature, however, on whether democracy makes a difference to the power and well-being of the countryside. Using India as a case where the longest-surviving democracy of the developing world exists, this book investigates how the countryside uses the political system to advance its interests. It is first argued that India's countryside has become quite powerful in the political system, exerting remarkable pressure on economic policy. The countryside is typically weak in the early stages of development, becoming powerful when the size of the rural sector defies this historical trend. But an important constraint on rural power stems from the inability of economic interests to overpower the abiding, ascriptive identities, and until an economic construction of politics completely overpowers identities and non-economic interests, farmers' power, though greater than ever before, will remain self-limited.

This book is a thorough investigation into the requisites of democracy. Based on data from all 132 sovereign states of the Third World, it first establishes a scale to measure the level of democracy existing in these countries. The author discusses various interpretations of the meaning of political democracy, and emerges with a specification of its essential principles which includes such elements as the holding of elections to central decision-making organs, and the maintenance of certain fundamental political liberties. Theories concerning the requisites of democratic government are then examined in order to explain the manifest differences in the level of democracy among the states of the Third World. The author employs statistical techniques including regression analysis to test theories related to socio-economic conditions, demographic and cultural factors, and institutional arrangements. This book thus provides a uniquely wide-ranging examination both of the elements which constitute democracy, and of the factors which explain its varying prevalence.

"Development First, Democracy Later? explores how politics and democracy plays out in reality in Africa as the major aid-receiving continent. It points to the seriously challenged political situations that aid countries engage in. Moreover, it looks at the Paris agenda aid modalities from a democracy perspective. It illustrates the on-and-off relationship with democracy concerns in the aid system. In addition, the book points to the challenges of aid, which are too often, based on a wrongful assumption that development comes first and democracy only (hopefully) later. The book brings to question the fundamental construction of the aid system and the values that drive it. While making a push for seeing the value of democracy on its own merits, as well as its advantages for development, the book poses some serious questions on the way the aid system is built and argues for substantive changes in the aid landscape. Issues raised are relevant for many discussions - from China as a development model, the aid system and - not least - for the debate on the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals."--