Introduction

Developing countries are likely to have a higher rate of economic growth if they have democratic political institutions and if their citizens have protections of their civil liberties (Kaufmann 2005; Kaufmann and Pritchett 1998; Sen 1999). Critics of the World Bank and IMF have contended that structural adjustment agreements undermine institutional democracy and protections of civil liberties. There were four main variants to this “undermining democracy” argument. The first three critiques focus on the deleterious effects of structural adjustment on the development of democratic institutions and democratic methods for selecting leaders. We find no evidence in support of this critique. In fact, we find considerable evidence to the contrary. Countries undergoing structural adjustment were more likely to develop democratic institutions and democratic human rights than those not undergoing structural adjustment.

The fourth argument suggesting that the implementation of structural adjustment programs undermines democratic rights is not about procedural democracy. It is about substantive democracy or the extent to which the actual policies produced in a society reflect what most people want. It's an important contention, and we will return to it later, but it is not an argument that can be tested using the kinds of evidence available for large-scale comparative analysis of the type we have conducted in this project.

The first argument was that the World Bank and IMF allegedly were more willing to negotiate with authoritarian governments than with democratic governments, because authoritarian governments were more likely to implement unpopular policies (Pion-Berlin 1984; 1989; 1997; 2001).