The roles of political inclusion and democracy in economic development: Insights from Singapore and Botswana

We need to advance from the simplistic assumption that as far as economic development is concerned, democracy is a ‘good thing’, whereas dictatorship is ‘bad thing’. There may be many valid reasons for promoting democratic governance in a country. But to say that it is necessary for growth in a developing economy is to ignore more complex realities surrounding the relationship between the two constructs. This paper calls for a more nuanced explication of the contributions of politics and political attributes to determining economic development. We need to move beyond simply prescribing democratization on the basis of statistical correlations between democracy, as measured by survey or unnamed ‘expert’ -based indices, and economic growth. We need to build a much better appreciation of and come up with a more consistent theory about the mechanics of how politics and governance drive economic development. I argue that Acemoğlu and Robinson’s introduction of the concept of political inclusion provides a promising starting point as it is a more concentrated effort in looking at how economic development happens given that state legitimacy and a degree of political centralization has been achieved. The trouble, though, is with the tendency to just assume that inclusion and democracy are one and the same. They are not. Subtle differences have a significant effect as we see in the cases of Singapore and Botswana; both hailed as miracles of their respective regions. The difference is that Singapore is an inclusive state but not a full fledged democracy, whereas Botswana is only partially inclusive, and is and has been democratic since its independence. The difference in their economic success is striking. Using the experiences of these two countries, I echo Hirschmann’s (1986) call for us to always be on the lookout for unusual historical developments - like those of Singapore and Botswana - to deepen our understanding and challenge our assumptions about development, rather than simply ignoring outliers and concentrating on data close to our lines of best fit. This would allow for the development of more refined approaches to such complex phenomena as ensuring sustainable growth in a developing country.