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Podcast: Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast
Episode: Haakon Gjerløw and Carl Henrik Knutsen, "One Road to Riches?: How State Building and Democratization Affect Economic Development" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
Description: Building effective state institutions before introducing democracy is widely presumed to improve different development outcomes. Conversely, proponents of this "stateness-first" argument anticipate that democratization before state building yields poor development outcomes. In One Road to Riches?: How State Building and Democratization Affect Economic Development (Cambridge UP, 2021), we discuss several strong assumptions that (different versions of) this argument rests upon and critically evaluate the existing evidence base. In extension, we specify various observable implications. We then subject the "stateness-first" argument to multiple tests, focusing on economic growth as an outcome. First, we conduct historical case studies of two countries with di...