Democracy: Consequences, Consolidation, and the Democratic Developmental State
The Global Expansion of Democracy in Recent Decades
In the mid-1970s a pronounced “third wave” of democratization began with the 1974 fall of Portugal’s dictatorship, then diffused through Latin America, Asia, the former Soviet bloc and finally Africa. By the mid-1990s between and countries—depending on classification rules—could plausibly be called democracies. Giovanni Carbone stresses that democratic rule now enjoys unrivalled international legitimacy; however, as democracies proliferate, citizens, scholars and policy-makers are increasingly asking what democracy is actually good for beyond voting rights and civil liberties. Larry Diamond adds that the new century poses the question of whether the third wave will suffer a serious “reverse wave” as previous waves did in and .
The Consequences-of-Democratization (COD) Research Agenda
Carbone identifies a largely uncoordinated but conceptually unified field that shifts democracy from dependent to independent variable. COD scholarship investigates whether, once elections become free and fair, societies obtain side-benefits such as stronger state institutions, domestic order, external peace, more robust growth, redistributive policies or human development. To map this terrain Carbone lists more than fifty optimistic hypotheses under seven headings (nation-building, state strength, domestic order, interstate peace, economic performance, economic reform, social welfare and miscellaneous goods). The very abundance of positive conjectures reveals both the allure and the methodological difficulty of COD work: definitional clarity is crucial, causal mechanisms overlap across issue-areas and many studies ignore possible trade-offs (for example, redistribution might dampen growth, or reduced inequality might lower war-risk yet provoke elite resistance).
Definitional Issues in COD Studies
Researchers must demarcate “democracy” narrowly—Carbone advocates Joseph Schumpeter’s minimalist focus on free, fair, competitive elections—otherwise one risks conflating Democracy-as-cause with its hypothesized consequences (rule-of-law, human rights, welfare states, etc.). A second issue is magnitude: moving from harsh authoritarianism to high-quality democracy should have different downstream effects than a small liberalization. Third, the temporal dimension matters: many predicted benefits (e.g., lower inequality) exhibit substantial lag—sometimes years—so cross-sectional snapshots can miss incubation periods. Finally, concepts such as “stock of democracy” (cumulative democratic experience) capture long-run causal processes better than annual Polity scores.
Democracy, Welfare and Poverty: Mixed Evidence
One COD sub-literature scrutinizes whether competitive multiparty rule delivers tangible social welfare gains. Democratic theorists from Amartya Sen to Bruce Bueno de Mesquita argue that electoral accountability forces elites to respond to mass demands for survival, redistribution and public goods. Sen’s comparative famine analysis famously states that “no substantial famine has ever occurred in a country with a democratic form of government and a relatively free press.” Yet large-$N$ and case-based research yields nuanced results:
Within democracies severe famines are indeed absent, but persistent chronic poverty remains common. No low-income democracy has fully eradicated poverty, whereas some authoritarian “developmental states” (e.g., pre-democratic South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore) achieved impressive poverty reduction.
Redistributive policies such as land reform and rising real wages are statistically more likely in democracies, yet the median-voter theorem does not automatically materialize; Eastern Europe’s transition saw inequality rise, and democratization’s egalitarian payoff often follows an inverse-U (“political Kuznets”) curve: inequality first increases, then falls after roughly two decades.
Social spending on basic education and health tends to increase after democratic transitions, particularly where rural constituencies exert electoral leverage. However higher spending does not always translate into better infant-mortality or literacy outcomes when bureaucratic capacity is weak or when middle-class capture skews service delivery.
These patterns suggest that electoral pressures alone are insufficient; quality of institutions, rule-of-law, bureaucratic meritocracy and sustained civil-society mobilisation shape whether democratic politics secures long-run welfare improvements.
Diamond’s Conceptual Clarifications: Electoral vs. Liberal Democracy
Larry Diamond distinguishes minimalist electoral democracy—regular, competitive multiparty elections with universal suffrage—from liberal democracy, which further requires rule-of-law, horizontal accountability, protection of civil and minority rights, pluralistic media and an independent judiciary. Freedom House’s combined Political Rights/Civil Liberties score approximates liberal democracy. Many post-third-wave regimes (Turkey, Russia in the 1990s, Sri Lanka, Colombia) hold genuine elections yet fail the liberal test because of widespread rights violations, reserved military domains or pervasive corruption. Diamond emphasises that consolidation involves behavioural and attitudinal acceptance of democratic “rules of the game” by both elites and masses, plus institutional deepening (functioning legislatures, courts, watchdog agencies) and satisfactory performance (security, growth, social justice).
Waves, Reverse Waves and the Danger of Democratic Decay
Historical precedent shows every expansionary wave has been followed by partial reversal. Democratic decay may arise through coups, but also more insidiously via erosion of checks-and-balances, media intimidation or informal authoritarian practices—without formal regime breakdown. To prevent a new reverse wave, Diamond argues democracies must deliver on both liberty and effective governance; failure to meet citizen expectations on order, prosperity or equality threatens legitimacy.
Size, Federalism and Devolution
Diamond notes that micro-states (populations < 1{\,}000{\,}000) are disproportionately likely to be liberal democracies, suggesting that proximity, social trust and access matter. For large, diverse countries, meaningful decentralisation, federal structures and devolution can approximate those advantages, bringing decision-making closer to citizens, enhancing accountability and dampening ethnic conflict.
The Democratic Developmental State: Conceptual Re-casting for Africa
Omano Edigheji situates Africa’s own post-independence trajectory—chronic under-development, authoritarian rule, structural adjustment and renewed democratisation—in the debate over whether a democratic developmental state (DDS) is feasible on the continent. He critiques liberal democracy’s tendency to treat citizens as periodic consumers of elections, neglecting socio-economic justice. Drawing on African scholars and the ECA’s 1990 “African Charter for Popular Participation,” he insists that authentic democracy must simultaneously pursue rapid growth, structural transformation, poverty eradication and popular participation.
Edigheji’s conceptual synthesis integrates two bodies of literature:
From East Asian models he adopts the twin organisational attributes of autonomy (state bureaucratic coherence, meritocratic recruitment, insulation from narrow patronage) and embeddedness (dense networks linking technocrats with key social constituencies to exchange information, coordinate investment and generate consensus). Yet he rejects the earlier view that soft authoritarianism is prerequisite; instead he argues for inclusive embeddedness—alliances must extend beyond business elites to encompass labour, grassroots associations and marginalised groups.
From democratic theory he adds procedural multiparty elections, horizontal accountability, transparency and a political society that encourages programmatic rather than clientelistic competition. Parties with broad social bases, internally democratic procedures and national—not ethnic—appeals help stabilise DDS coalitions.
A DDS therefore becomes a state that is able and willing to employ its administrative, fiscal and coercive capabilities to pursue developmentalist goals while remaining subject to democratic oversight and vibrant popular participation.
Africa’s Post-1960 Trajectory and the Need for DDS
After independence many African governments rhetorically embraced African-socialist or mixed-economy developmentalism, but centralised nation-building, one-party rule and patronage politicised the state apparatus, undermining autonomy. The debt crisis of the 1980s pushed governments into IMF/World Bank Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) that narrowed policy space, cut public investment and eroded bureaucratic capacity, producing what Thandika Mkandawire calls “choiceless democracies.” Meanwhile, liberalisation brought multiparty elections but little socio-economic improvement, fuelling civil conflict and citizen disillusionment.
Edigheji contends the challenge today is to reconstruct state capacity (meritocratic civil services, developmental planning agencies), broaden governing coalitions to include community-embedded organisations and design institutions—whether federal or unitary, presidential or parliamentary—that promote inclusiveness, accountability and stability.
Methodological and Practical Implications for Future Research and Policy
Carbone’s COD framework demands longitudinal designs, careful counter-factuals and attention to causal pathways (inequality might mediate democracy’s effects on peace or growth). Diamond’s consolidation research underscores the need for attitudinal data (mass surveys), sub-national analyses and vigilance against creeping illiberalism. Edigheji’s DDS agenda invites comparative institutional study across Africa: Where do pockets of bureaucratic meritocracy survive? How do consultative economic councils or tripartite forums alter policy outcomes? Can participatory budgeting and devolved taxation rebuild trust? How do globalisation and mobile capital constrain (or sometimes aid) domestic developmental coalitions?
Concluding Reflection
Democracy’s promise—whether understood as liberal freedoms, performance legitimacy or developmental transformation—remains contingent, not automatic. COD scholarship urges sober appraisal of benefits and costs; consolidation theory warns of regression unless freedom is matched by effectiveness; the DDS debate insists that in Africa (and perhaps elsewhere) “good governance” must entail both popular sovereignty and cohesive state leadership capable of steering structural change. The twenty-first century’s democratic agenda, therefore, is less about counting electoral regimes and more about crafting institutional arrangements that embed liberty, equality, participation and shared prosperity in mutually reinforcing ways.