“Democracy and the Effect on the Economic Growth”

Essay by batusai45College, Undergraduate December 2010

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Wilson Acevedo

PSC 10400

Prof. Vincent Boudreau

"Democracy and the Effect on the Economic Growth"

Democracy is defined as a "government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections."� In other words, the most attractive feature of a democratic government is that if the majority of its people are not satisfy with the social, economic, and political situation of their nation, then they have the power to change the government. There have been many arguments to whether or not a democratic government is best type of governmental structure that any country could establish. Some of these arguments, among others, include the fact that a democratic system promotes the free market, which tend to increase the overall economic situation of a country. Economic growth is an increase in the capacity of an economy to produce goods and services, comparing one period to another.�

In order for any economy to positively grow, it needs to increase the level of gross domestic product (GDP) or the entire amount of goods and services it produces. Gross domestic product is one of the key measurements of economic development, which basically describes the overall standard of living of a country's inhabitants in the long-run. For this reason, one of the main arguments for democratization brings out the question of whether or not there is some type of relationship between democracy and economic growth.

In this analysis, the question of whether or not there is some type of relationship between democracy and economic growth will not only be faced, but also answered. In order to address this issue, the structure of the analysis will consist of a graphical and numerical comparison of the trend between democracy and...