Why Democracies Excel

In an article in Foreign Affairs, and in their book, The Democracy Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity and Peace, authors Morton H. Halperin (Director, OSI-Washington Office), Joseph T. Siegle and Michael M. Weinstein advocate a democracy-centered development strategy rather than a “development first, democracy later” strategy. A development-first strategy risks perpetuating the deadly cycle of poverty, conflict and oppression.

The authors make a compelling case for supporting democracies, and find that the US and other industrialized democracies and international financial institutions have not shown great preference to countries on the path to democracy when providing economic assistance. In fact, much of the official development assistance has been provided to autocracies rather than to democracies. They say that the West can and should change this policy.

The PDF file attached below contains the full text of the article. This article originally appeared in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs.

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