Democracy and Economic Development - Essay Example

GDP is an important indicator of a country’s economic development. There is a change in the total population of a country depending on demographic transition. To avoid the effect of the population, per capita GDP is always a better indicator of economic development, rather than the total GDP of the country. Ten African countries are taken randomly to explain their economic development with their per capita GDP and also to show the relationship between the economic development and number of years spent under democracy.

Some of these countries have strong controlling power on the free-market economy in democratic governance. The effectiveness of political liberalization brought some significant macroeconomic reform in some countries (Barkan and Gordon). Among these African countries, Angola, Algeria, and Namibia had a high per capita GDP, which is above $4000 (World Bank). Others were having low per capita GDP. The common finding was the positive rate of growth in GDP (World Bank) for all countries. Nigeria had the highest GDP amongst them but depending on its population, the per capita GDP was lower with comparing with Angola, Algeria, and Namibia (World Bank).

On the other hand, Namibia had a very low amount of total GDP but depending on the population, the per capita GDP was showing a high amount. Algeria had the highest GDP growth rate comparing with others. Democratic countries are showing a positive rate of growth of per capita GDP. It can be noticed that those countries with early democratization have lower per capita GDP (World Bank).Correlation between democracy and economic development:There is a relationship between democracy and economic development that both move in the same direction for a country.

These two aspects are mutually related to each other (Barkan, Gordon). However, countries with longer democracy period are showing low per capita GDP. But from this result, we cannot say that democracy and economic development are negatively correlated because economic development does not mean only the high value of per capita GDP. There are many other aspects to consider for discussing economic development. Life expectancy at birth, literacy rate, the standard of living (World Bank), etc. are very important factors to notice for discussing economic development.

After democratization, a country could get political liberalization and improvement in economic and foreign policies (Barkan and Gordon). There would be a chance of economic development with the proper utilization of effective policies. Though there was a sustainable growth in per capita GDP, we could not conclude it as sustainable development. It was difficult to suggest whether this development was the effect of democratization depending only on the per capita GDP of those countries. But this can be stated that the democratization helped those countries to get a higher per capita GDP.