Comparative Democracy Redux: The Economic Development Thesis 1972-2014

This paper replicates the analysis conducted in Burkhart and Lewis-Beck (1994), using current statistical software, where economic development demonstrates a causal relationship to democracy in an extensive cross-national dataset from 1972-1989, even in the face of strong control variables such as regime history and world-system position. It extends those findings with a dataset of approximately 120 countries from 1972-2014, largely confirming the previously published findings.