?
Дискуссии о модернизации: ведет ли экономическое развитие к демократии?
The participants of discussion review the thesis that economic development explains the rise and persistence of democracy,
often referred to as the “Lipset thesis” after Seymour Lipset’s 1959 article. Most of the authors suggest that modernization
theory in its most “simple version” rests on shaky empirical foundations. That is, at best there seems to be
limited evidence in favor of the hypothesis that a change in income in a given year produces an unconditional, instantaneous
change in the likelihood of democracy. Several of the contributions point to substantial evidence in favor of a
more refined version of modernization theory, suggesting that increasing income promotes democracy i) in the medium
or long-term and ii) conditional on certain “triggers” of authoritarian regime breakdown. It should be noted that there
seems to be more evidence in favor of a link between income and democratic sustainability (“Przeworski thesis”).
When considering democratic survival, income may even have an unconditional effect and an instantaneous effect.
C. Welzel sketches how increases in material resources (such as money) and cognitive resources (such as education)
shifts people’s preferences from existential concerns to freedom and self-realization – as part of “emancipative values”.
D. Acemoglu and J. Robinson claim that there is no tendency for countries to become more democratic as they become
more ‘modernized’ whether in terms of higher levels of income per-capita or education. The initial conditions created
inclusive or extractive institutions which then put the societies onto very different long run paths of modernization and
development. G. Munk declares that the majority of studies go against the expectations of modernization theory, suggesting
that there is no positive or a negative income-democracy link. He concludes that modernization theory is a
failed theory. We need to set it aside and move on to more promising avenues of research.