What drives liberal policies in developing countries?

This paper investigates why governments in some developing countries have adopted more liberal policies than others. To construct a composite policy index, the paper applies a robust principal components analysis to Washington Consensus policy variables. The paper shows that income growth is higher in countries with more liberal policies. Using a Bayesian approach which addresses the model uncertainty problem, this study finds that government policies are more liberal in countries which possess right-wing or centrist governments, have greater political stability, and are former Spanish colonies. In contrast, countries which are less ethnically diverse, are former French colonies, and have a military leader tend to implement less liberal policies.