Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Democracy 3: What’s the ‘big idea’? What do the authors actually find?
The authors present a series of findings, big and small, through the course of this text. Especially with all of the statistical jargon that you don’t understand, it may be easy to lose the big picture in what they describe as a “forest of numbers”. But step back and try to summarize the work in your head. Pinpoint a few of the findings and tie them together for yourself. Then try to figure out: what’s the big idea being advanced here? What theory has been proven? What arrow diagram would you draw up on the chalkboard? (Note: Yes, you can bet that someone will be asked to draw their diagram on the board!)
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I think this hits on the most interesting aspect of this book; that is, the part that seems most authoritative is almost entirely descriptive. For instance, the authors make the point that unrest seems to affect dictatorships more than democracies (7 times more, to be exact). But having said that, there's little they can legitimately say about why that is, despite the fact that that's quite possibly an important part of why certain types of dictatorships fall at various rates.
Having said that, I think the "big idea" is that to quote the back cover, "on almost every count...democracy outpreforms authoritarianism." Although they do not say it, there's this self-perpetuation about democracy because of its features. Rich democracies never fall, and democracy does a much better job of consistent (and faster!) per capita growth, so things look pretty good for ol' democracy. Even at the lower levels democracy is no worse than dictatorship economically. All in all, the authors are saying that democracy is not a bad thing, and authoritarian governments are not a good thing, in that economic wellbeing, political freedoms and the like are considered good things.
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