Democracy and Development

The Econ blog on WSJ ran this discussion between Acemoglu and Glaeser. Interesting since I have been debating, both internally and with friends, whether democracy is necessarily a good thing. The end result, so far, is that I believe that although it may be good for capitalism, democracy may not be good for all people and we risk falling into the paternalism trap by wishing it upon all people. A friend of mine from the former Soviet Union recently hypothesized that democracy is bad for the Russian people because they have a cultural tradition of strong, autocratic leaders. Likewise, the Atlantic Monthly ran an article some years back stating much of the same idea.

Thanks for the pointer to Pete Boettke at The Austrian Economists.