Publications
- Reevaluating the Modernization Hypothesis
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- by Robinson, James A.; Acemoglu, Daron; Johnson, Simon; Yared, Pierre
- This paper revisits and critically reevaluates the widely-accepted modernization hypothesis which claims that per capita income causes the creation and the consolidation of democracy. We argue that existing studies
find support for this hypothesis because they fail to control for the presence of omitted variables. There are many underlying historical factors that affect both the level of income per capita and the likelihood of democracy in a country, and failing to control for these factors may introduce a spurious relationship between income and democracy. We show that controlling for these historical factors by including
fixed country effects removes the correlation between income and democracy, as well as the correlation between income and the
likelihood of transitions to and from democratic regimes. We argue that this evidence is consistent with another well-established approach in political science, which emphasizes how events
during critical historical junctures can lead to divergent political-economic development paths,
some leading to prosperity and democracy, others to relative poverty and non-democracy. We
present evidence in favor of this interpretation by documenting that the
fixed effects we estimate
in the post-war sample are strongly associated with historical variables that have previously been
used to explain diverging development paths within the former colonial world.
- Publication Type: WCFIA Working Paper
- Published Date: August 2007
- Field of Interest: International Economics
- Robison, James A., Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and Pierre Yared. "Reevaluating the Modernization Hypothesis." Working Paper 2008-0100, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, August 2007.
