Does democracy stifle economic growth?

In this article, I write about the prospects for democracy in China.

An earlier article I wrote, also on the prospects for democracy in China.

You can tune in to a BBC program called The Forum for a discussion on democracy amongst myself, Amartya Sen and Salwa Ismail.

For the best treatment of how an extractive economic model can produce growth for a period of time but eventually will collapse, read Why Nations Fail.

I always enjoy reading Steven Pinker's books, but his most recent book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, has some startling statistics on the death tolls of totalitarian regimes vis-à-vis the death tolls of democratic regimes. One of the major theses of this book is that the rise of the rights revolution and democratic forms of government is one of the main causes behind the historic reduction of violence.