Abstract

The notion that relatively poor pre-industrial countries, including those just recovering from or even struggling with violent conflicts, should be encouraged and aided in quickly setting up democratic institutions is relatively recent. Throughout the Cold War and continuing today, many voices, including proponents of the “Asian path to growth,” policy professionals, and economists, have argued that a period of authoritarian rule was both desirable and necessary for poorer states in order to create state institutions capable of reshaping their economies, promoting economic efficiencies, and ensuring the sustained investments in public goods needed to put poor countries on track for rapid economic development. This position was challenged by two major developments.

First was the collapse of the communist regimes of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 1989-91. While many of the post-communist successor regimes, especially those in Central Asia, failed to sustain a transition to democracy, the end of the Cold War was seen by many as demonstrating the failure of the major alternative model of economic and political development. Liberal democracy became identified as the only political system that would lead to sustained political stability and long-term economic success (Fukuyama 1992).

The second major development was the steady spread of democratic aspirations and reforms among developing countries, starting in the 1970s and driven by the demands of their own populations for regimes that would replace the notoriously corrupt and ineffective governments of the post-colonial era with more accountable and responsible governments. This trend began with the collapse of dictatorships in Portugal, Spain, and Greece and the expansion of the European Union, and continued with the development of democracy in South Korea and Taiwan, the replacement of military and one-party regimes and the consolidation of democracy in Latin America from Chile to Mexico, and the emergence of democracy in many African states from South Africa to Mali. According to Freedom House, in 1975 the number of countries that were "not free" exceeded those that were "free" by 50%. However, by 1985 the growth in "free" countries was such that they outnumbered those still ranked as "not free," and by 2007 twice as many countries were "free" as were "not free" (Freedom House 2008).

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