Law, democracy and the quality of government in Africa

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper examines the big questions of African comparative politics. It assesses the interaction of three crucial components in the development of the continent: law, democracy and quality of government. Political regimes of democracy, polity and autocracy are instrumented with income-levels, legal-origins, religious-dominations and press-freedom levels to account for government quality dynamics of corruption-control, government-effectiveness, voice and accountability, political-stability, regulation quality and rule of law. Findings indicate democracy has an edge over autocracy while the later and polity overlap. A democracy that takes into account only the voice of the majority is better in government quality than autocracy, while a democracy that takes into account the voice of the minority (polity) is worse in government quality than autocracy. As a policy implication, democracy once initiated should be accelerated to edge the appeals of authoritarian regimes and reap the benefits of time and level hypotheses.

Keywords: Law; Politics; Democracy; Government Policy; Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K00 O10 P16 P43 P50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-12-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev, nep-law and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Law, Democracy and the Quality of Government in Africa (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:35502

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