DV464      Half Unit
Democracy and Development

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

One could argue that the ‘holy grail’ in the study of political economy is the relationship between democracy and development. Does economic development lead to democracy? Are democracies better at promoting development than non-democracies? This course examines this topic in a broad perspective, in both historical and contemporary contexts, and in theoretical and empirical debates.

The course is roughly divided into two, with the first half tackling theories of democracy and development while the second examines empirical evidence. In the first half we will examine historical theories explaining why development can promote democratization from authors such as Seymour Lipset and Barrington Moore, before focussing on contemporary debates from Acemoglu/Robinson, Przeworski and Rodrik. We then focus on the effect of democratization on both economic development and public goods provision, before examining the topic of inequality, redistribution and democracy with attention to Thomas Piketty’s recent work. We conclude the first half of the course by discussing the indirect effects of development on democracy via changes in religion, ethnicity and nationalism, with attention to how development can promote secularism, ethnic homogenization and national identity formation.

The second half of the course focusses on specific countries and groups of countries. We start by examining countries which have developed without becoming democracies, with a focus on examples from East Asia (especially China, Singapore and Vietnam) and the Middle East (the Gulf states). We then have lectures on the BRICS countries, such as South Africa, India and Brazil. Finally, we conclude by speculating on the future of development and democracy in the developing world.

20 hours of lectures in the Autumn Term.
15 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

Essay (1500 words)

Students will write two 1500-word essays during the course of the WT. The one which gets the lower mark will constitute the ‘formative’ essay and will not count at all towards the final mark.

Green, Elliott. 2022. Industrialization and Assimilation: Explaining Ethnic Change in the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Guriev, Sergei and Daniel Treisman. 2022. Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Haggard, Stephan and Robert R. Kaufman. 2016. Dictators and Democrats: Masses, Elites, and Regime Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Min, Brian. 2015. Power and the Vote: Elections and Electricity in the Developing World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Paglayan, Agustina. 2024. Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Przeworski, Adam. 2019. Crises of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tang, Shiping. 2022. The Institutional Foundation of Economic Development. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Tudor, Maya. 2013. The Promise of Power: The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wimmer, Andreas. 2018. Nation-Building: Why Some Countries Come Together While Others Fall Apart. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Essay (25%, 1500 words)

Essay (75%, 4000 words)

Students will write two 1500-word essays during the course of the WT, with the due dates to be confirmed at the beginning of the course.  Both will be submitted and marked blind; the one which receives the higher mark will constitute 25% of the final mark for the course, and the one which gets the lower mark will constitute the ‘formative’ essay and will not count at all towards the final mark.

Students will take one of the two essays from the WT and revise it according to the comments they receive and resubmit it as a 4000-word essay in Spring Term, which will constitute 75% of their final mark for the course.