The Divergent Post-Communist Paths to Democracy
44 Pages Posted: 30 Jun 2016
Date Written: June 29, 2016
Abstract
We show that the economic transition has been more successful than the political transformation in the quarter century since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The adoption of strong parliamentarian systems has negated the deleterious effects of religious and imperial history on economic evolution. As a result, the divergence in democracy and political rights is 4 to 5 times larger than the divergence in the path towards economic freedom and ease of doing business. Democracy is not harder to predict than economic freedom — history and ethnicity predict it well. But recent authoritarian regressions in Hungary and Poland, countries with successful economic reforms and strong parliamentarian systems, present a new challenge to researchers.
Keywords: Economic Freedom, Ease of Doing Business, Democracy
JEL Classification: P26, P52
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation