Do all good things go together? : Exploring the political, economic and social consequences of democratisation

The latter part of the twentieth century was a period of rapid democratisation on a global scale. From the moment democratic reforms were undertaken, the attention of political science scholars mostly focused on three main lines of research: the causes of the political changes taking place, the modes of regime transitions, and the characteristics of the new political systems. A set of issues that largely remained under-researched concerns the broader implications of political reforms. Does democracy come at a cost – be it an increase in violent conflict, slower economic growth, higher inequality or anything else – or, on the contrary, are there broader, virtuous transformations triggered by democratisation processes? While the literature on democratisation does include a few hypotheses concerning the effects of democratic transitions on, say, the consolidation of state institutions, the achievement of domestic peace or the adoption of neo-liberal economic reforms, there is – with a few notable exceptions – a relative lack of theoretical elaboration and empirical research. Even more striking is the absence of any recognition that these issues share a common thread and are essentially part of the same approach to the study of democratisation. This paper examines some of the theoretical and empirical questions that lay behind the choice of taking democracy not as an endpoint, but as a starting point. The political, social and economic consequences that emerged in countries in which actual democratic change took place constitute not only a promising field of inquiry, but a crucial one for understanding the future prospects of democracy.