Democracy in the new Congo? - Nothing is Sacred: Economic Ideas for the New Millennium by Robert J. Barro
Cambio della guardia in Congo. La democrazia trionferà?…
… The overthrow of Zaire's (now the Democratic Republic of Congo's) long-time dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, had barely been accomplished in 1997 when the victor, Laurent Kabila, heard the standard Western clamor for democracy…
Stesso copione in Afghanistan…
… Interestingly, we are now hearing similar ideas expressed for the post-conflict Afghanistan…
Difficile pensarlo: la democrazia non premia i meritevoli.
Un uomo coraggioso si batte per far fuori un dittatore sanguinario mettendo a rischio la sua vita e poi che fa? Passa la mano lasciando che siano altri a realizzare i loro progetti per la sua terra? Difficile pensarlo…
… The push for instant democracy in 1997 in the new Congo somehow seemed unfair… What then was the reward for leading a risky revolution that eliminated the person who had led his country to more than thirty years of negative average economic growth?…
Ma pesa un altro fatto: la democrazia è un bene di lusso.
Dove c’è povertà non puo’ esserci democrazia…
… History makes clear that democratic institutions have little chance of survival when the standard of living is this low…
Democrazia in Africa? Meglio negli anni sessanta che oggi…
… One also has to recall that the prospects for democracy in Africa looked better in the 1960s than they do now. However, the optimistic outlook in the 1960s was never realistic…
La democrazia non arricchisce il popolo, non esiste infatti un legame tra democrazia e crescita economica. Forse per questo non interessa i poveri…
… Democracy, in the sense of political rights and civil liberties, is, in any case, not the characteristic of institutions that matters most for economic performance…
E i dittatori spingono la crescita economica? A volte sì, anche se i problemi sono tanti…
… although some dictators have delivered good economic results-Pinochet in Chile, Lee in Singapore, Fujimori for awhile in Peru, Park in South Korea, and the shah in Iran-the list of economic failures among dictators is larger: Marcos in the Philippines, Mao in China, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Duvalier in Haiti, and a cast of despots in sub-Saharan Africa….
Le democrazia iniziano sempre bene, prima di impantanarsi…
… The favorable economic effects from democracy seem, however, to disappear once a country attains a moderate degree of liberalization, such as that characteristic through the 1990s in places such as Malaysia, Mexico, and Turkey. Further expansions of democratic freedoms toward the Western ideal seem to come at the expense of economic growth…
Perché la democrazia s’impantana regolarmente? Perché sfocia nello stato sociale, una creatura costosa e inefficiente…
… Such a system tends to favor redistributions from rich to poor and, more specifically, the expansions of social welfare programs…
Cosa giovaallora al progresso economico? E qui parte il solito elenco (che non comprende il voto democratico)…
… maintenance of secure property rights, promotion of the rule of law, fostering of free markets domestically and for international trade, macroeconomic stability, and investments in education, health, and some forms of infrastructure…
Dittature virtuose…
… Singapore, Chile, Peru, China, South Korea, Taiwan,…
Quanto detto non esclude che la prosperità porti alla democrazia, anzi…
… there is a good deal of evidence that economic prosperity leads eventually to sustainable expansions of democracy…
La Cina sarà un bel banco di prova per questa tesi.
Il miglior consiglio che si doveva dare a Kabila, nuovo uomo forte del Congo: non puntare sulla democrazia ma sul benessere del paese…
… The best advice that outsiders could have offered Kabila, before he was assassinated in 2001 and then succeeded by his son, was not to focus on elections and power sharing but rather to emphasize the growth-promoting policies…
Un consiglio che vale anche per noi: non esportiamo democrazia ma benessere.
