No democracy with a free press has ever experienced a major famine – Amartya Sen
OxBlog’s Patrick Belton points out a fine article by CFR scholars on Why Democracies Excel.
U.S. and international development agencies, believing that poor countries should develop economically before they become democratic, have not taken politics into account when disbursing aid. This is a mistake: poor democracies are almost always stronger, calmer, and more caring than poor autocracies, because they allow power to be shared and encourage openness and accountability. They deserve all the help they can get. [NYT/Foreign Affairs]
Related Link: It’s Democracy, stupid!
Whats this.. Amartya is starting to sound like a neocon! Pushing democracy as a end in itself. Ha 🙂
Yeah, I mean I read an article called the ‘liberal case for george bush’ and was stunned to see that the US under Bush has set itself on a path of antiisolationsim (that the republicans were famous for, historically).
Ain’t it surprising besides that the liberals aren’ty quite celebrating Afghanistan’s elections, Iraq’s likely elections, women’s rights to work and education etc that’ve happened so far in corrupt dictatorships “fortunate” enough to be invaded by the US?
Oops, that shiuld’ve been the democrats fanmous for anti-isolationism. Sorry.
🙂
OK, interesting correlation. What is cause and what is effect? Or are we merely seeing two side effects of a particular cultural development?