Aug 4, 2009

The Never Ending Story: Constitutional Changes to Prolong Presidencies

Probably the most obvious indication of non democratic countries is when it comes to so called referendums on a constitutional change to allow a president to remain in power: Niger being the latest case.

While elections themselves say little about how democratic the structures of a country are, such a step makes clear that the political ruling class is truly an elite which has no interest in using the potential benefits from democratic structures for economic growth but misuses them for their own purpose.

Did anyone ever consider using a dummy for such a (request for) constitutional change rather than the naive democracy dummy in a growth regression? Seems promising to me...clearly one needs to use settler mortality or some winds as instrument...

2 comments:

Pierre-Louis said...

now after the failed attempt in Honduras let's see what happens in Colombia!

i guess the best explanation of this phenomenon is in Lord of the rings...even the sweetest Bilbo is not able to let go the ring at the end..."the ring is mine"

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