Democracy and Economic Growth: A meta-analysis

The relationship between political democracy and economic growth has been a center of debate in the past fifty years. A corpus of cross-country research has shown that the theoretical divide on the impact of democratic versus authoritarian regimes on growth is matched by ambiguous empirical results, resulting in a consensus of an inconclusive relationship. Through this paper we challenge this consensus. In contrast to the current consensus, we show that once the microscope of meta-analysis is applied to the accumulated evidence, it is possible to draw several firm and robust conclusions regarding democracy and economic growth.......