Democracy and development: With Special attention to Korea

Academic discussions on the relationship between regime type and economic growth of developing countries have been drawn to three linkages, the contribution of a certain type of political authoritarianism to rapid industrial transformation, the trend towards democracy after a long period of sustained economic development, and possible negative economic consequences of democratization itself. There are theoretical reasons to support the first two assertions, but the third proposition is less tenable. The case of Korea shows that democratic changes have resulted in higher consumption, have induced inflationary policy, and have led to wage increases in excess of productivity gains. However, these might well be transitional rather than steady-state phenomena. Political learning can prevent young democracies from becoming captives to distributional coalitions.