Democratic Providentialism
New York Times, December 12, 2004; Michael Ignatieff

In his December 12th piece in the New York Times Magazine Ignatieff takes on the “development first, democracy later” thesis of thinkers such as Fareed Zarakia who asks: can you have a stable democracy in a nation with annual per capita income below $6,000? While many posit that the great democracies ought to support “growth-oriented autocracies” like Singapore in order that their populace might be enriched and then seek stable democracy, Ignatieff places the spotlight on a recent book The Democracy Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity, by Morton Halperin, Joseph Siegle, and Michael Weinstein. Madeleine Albright’s reaction to the book: (It) “obliterates the myth – beloved of dictators – that democracy is somehow the enemy of development rather than an essential ally.” Ignatieff suggest that this perspective on rapid Chinese growth of the last decades leads to the conclusion that the economic miracle is undoubtedly in trouble.