Manoel BittencourtNov 9, 2023
Rule of law and development: a follow up on a previous post about #ruleoflaw and #development in #democracies and #nondemocracies.
The pictures below illustrate differences in rule of law and #economic development in the #usa, #China, #russia and #Africa.
As mentioned before, there is literature suggesting that #democracy does cause #growth as well as on the role of #geopolitics on development.
Show threadRainer MüllerDec 28, 2023

@manoel_bittencourt Hm... x-axis are almost not compareable. Would be nice to see how the data correlates over time or in a scatter plot.

Ich did a simple correlation with happiness vs. GDP per captia. Happiness correlated better with GDP than with freedom house index.

Show threadManoel BittencourtDec 28, 2023
@rainer thanks!! Sure thing, let me think and be in touch soon.
Show threadRainer MüllerDec 28, 2023

@manoel_bittencourt With pleasure 🙂

PS: Found the plot with happiness vs. democracy.

I would interpret:
If very happy, chances are high that you live in a (western style) democracy.

But democracy is not a sufficient condition to have happy citizens. Check out Saudi Arabia: Absolutist monarchy, no freedom of speach but people seem pretty happy.

Quality of linear model underlying hypothesis not great.

Lower left point: Afghanistan.

PPS: The other one (GDP vs. Happiness) is not compiled.

Show threadManoel Bittencourt
@rainer thanks so much!! and apologies for the slow reply.. very interesting indeed, it seems that being democratic, and a bit rich, helps? but then again, Lipsey, or Acemoglu and Robinson? Let's talk more, perhaps we can brainstorm and put something together..
#democracy #happyness #modernization #criticaljunctures
Jan 9, 2024 at 9:47amWeb
Show threadRainer MüllerJan 28, 2024

Hi @manoel_bittencourt sry for no reply from my side. A lot to do at work. As I'm not working in pol science since 2 yrs I do these things out of interest in my spare time.

Acemoglu you said: you mean the instability of systems with extractive regimes? Core argument: there can always come a bad king that siphons off too much. Right? And dems are waterproofed against that as they can just vote for a better leader. I think success of illib. Dems (US, Poland, Hungary) shows it is not so easy.

Show threadRainer MüllerJan 28, 2024

@manoel_bittencourt when it comes to Lipsey, I am an illiterate. Read a few information on its core ideas (2nd best, imperfect competition) but was not able to connect it to our case. Would be happy if you could drop me a few lines on your train of thought.

Have a nice Sunday!

PS: Looked for the R script on welfare vs happiness but it is lost. But found the dataset.