Have democracy and/or democratization slowed growth in
Asia? There are several reasons to suspect that one or the
other might have. To begin with, since 1960, average real
GDP per capita growth rates have been significantly higher
in Asia’s authoritarian regimes (4.6% per year) than they have
been in its democratic regimes (3.3% per year). 1 This remains
true even if the poorest performing authoritarian countries
such as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Nepal are included
in the sample. 2 In addition, South Asia’s longstanding and
fulsome democracies (India and Sri Lanka) have grown much
slower (2.8% per capita per year) and invested substantially
less (21.3% of GDP) than East Asia’s developmentally oriented
authoritarian regimes where GDP per capita growth
rates averaged 5.9% per year and investment averaged 31.9%
of GDP. To make matters worse, per capita growth rates fell
in Indonesia (from 4.4% per year to 2.6% per year) and Pakistan
(from 2.9% per year to 2.6% per year) during periods of
democratic rule, and they fell in Thailand following the onset
of a more fulsome democracy. 3 But it turns out that this outcome
is not inevitable. South Korea grew faster under democratic
rule (5.9% per year) than it did under authoritarian rule
(5.4% per year). So have the Philippines (1.7% per year versus
.7% per year) and Bangladesh (1.5% per year versus .9% per
year).