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Some Social and Political Implications of Economic Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Mancur Olson Jr
Mancur Olson Jr
Affiliation:
Princeton
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Extract

However much men differ about what constitutes good government, they agree that it is conducive to economic development. It is sometimes taken for granted that the first step on the road to economic development is the establishment of an effective government that is determined to achieve such development. Thus Dr. Nkrumah enjoined his followers: “Seek ye first the kingdom of politics and all else shall be added unto you.” Students of economic development might not think the matter is as simple as that, but they still spend most of their time in search of government policies conducive to economic growth; they ask how economic plans can be improved, when governments can best rely on private initiative, and so on.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , April 1965 , pp. 525 - 554
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1965

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References

1 It would take us far afield here to go into the technical shortcomings of Zebot's book. But here is a characteristic, if trivial, example. Zebot argues that there is a “basic psychological preference” for private goods over public goods (p. 53). But obviously the valuation people place upon a unit of any good, public or private, depends among other things on how much of that good is already available to them; if there is a surfeit of a given private good but no amount of some desirable public good has been provided, the public good would presumably be preferred to the private good.

2 Potter, David M., among others, has made this same point, and moreover concluded that the durability of democracy in the United States can be explained primarily in terms of the nation's wealth. (See his People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character [Chicago 1954], 111–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.) The opposing view that poor nations can be as democratic as rich ones has been argued most forcefully by W. Arthur Lewis in Politics in West Africa (forthcoming).

3 Harbison, Frederick, “Entrepreneurial Organizations as a Factor in Economic Development,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, LXX (August 1956), 364–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.