Read an excerpt of The Democracy Advantage.

For decades, policies pursued by the United States and other industrialized nations toward the developing world have been based on a secret kept among policy experts: democracy and development don't mix. Turning this long-held view on its head, The Democracy Advantage makes a bold case that they do.

In this timely and path-breaking book, the authors dismantle the conventional wisdom that democratic reforms are destabilizing and that the West must rely on authoritarian regimes to create robust economies that give rise to a middle class and, eventually, democratic government. Uncovering forty years of empirical data from China, India, Chile, and Iraq, The Democracy Advantage shows that poor democracies surpass poor autocracies on nearly every economic measure. In addition, the book offers dramatic evidence that democracies are more stable: they are less likely to succumb to civil conflict, experience humanitarian catastrophes, or breed terrorists than such authoritarian countries as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.

Moving past the anecdotal data that have long shaped common assumptions about the trade-offs between democracy and development, The Democracy Advantage is based on an extensive review of historical experience, including critical analysis of the post-Cold War era—a time when many countries started down the road to democracy. The authors' discovery of a startling pattern of superior performance among democracies in the developing world—particularly among such quality of life measures as life expectancy, infant mortality, and girls' education—demand a strategic rethinking of international development policies.

A Council on Foreign Relations Book