Democratizzazione e percorsi di sviluppo: sulla coevoluzione di sistemi economici e regimi politici (Democratization and development paths)

This paper deals with one of the central debates in the recent literature of political economy: the cause-effect relationship between capitalist development and liberal democracy. It is divided into two sections. In the first part, we break away from the idea that democracy can rise anywhere. Then, we criticise the proposition that development may offer favourable, necessary and/or sufficient prerequisites to democracy. Finally, we contest the symmetrical thesis for which democracy may provide favourable, necessary and/or sufficient prerequisites to development. In the second part, we propose and justify a co-evolutive approach to the close connection between the processes of development and democratization. What the method of investigation analyzes in depth is the network of multi-dimensional phenomena in progress, rather than a static relationship among well-defined events. As we move away from the search for causes, we refuse the idea that a certain condition inevitably leads to a certain outcome. Instead, the scope of this theory is to select few powerful social mechanisms that regulate the processes under consideration. In this regard, we try to focus the main conditions of possibility by which development paths and democratization are intertwined.