Democratic Changes: Political Stability in Kuwait- Literature Review Assignment Help

Internal Code: TV756

Literature Review Assignment Help:

Task: Economic element Economic development is one of the elements that can help any country to transition to democracy, and if the country has a healthy economy it is likely to become a democratic state. That occurs because the citizens of the state take on their political responsibility and get involved in the political life under the motivation of improving their economic prosperity. On the other hand, if the wealth remains in the top tiny elite, this will lead to a dictatorial regime and the majority of the population will be in poverty because the wealth will not be distributed equally between the citizens (Lipset 1959). Economic development is characterized by four aspects such as industrialization, urbanization, wealth and education. The growth of these aspects is likely to increase democratization, and the decline of these aspects is likely to decrease the chance of implementing democratisation. The measure of industrialisation is the percentage of adult men who are working in the agricultural sector; when the percentage is low the chance of democratisation increases and if the percentage is high the chance of democratisation decreases. Scholars measure wealth by per capita income, if the per capita income increases, the chance of democratisation increases, and if the per capita income decreases, the chance of democratisation decreases. Urbanisation has three elements of measurement: first the percentage of metropolitan residents, second the percentage of residents of communities of 20,000 and larger, and the third measure is the percentage who live in communities of more than 100,000 people. When the state has higher percentages of these aspects, the likelihood of democracy will be higher and if the percentage is low, the likelihood of democracy will be low too. The last aspect is education, and scholars emphasise that a more educated population leads to democracy more often than a less educated population (Lipset 1959). However, some scholars argue that the rise of per capita income does not necessarily lead to democratic transitions. More than that, they argue that the relation between democratic transition and income is decreasing in modern states, to become as it was in dictatorships (Przeworski 2000). On the other hand, David L. Epstein et al and his colleagues (2006) argue that Przeworski examined just two types of regimes (democracy and dictatorship), and neglected the third regime type (partial democracy) which is between full democracy and authoritarianism. Then they explain the mistake which leads to their result, that they assumed adichotomy instead of a trichotomy. Their test will lead to one of their regimes types and the results show that per capita income is not important for democratic transition. But when David L. Epstein et al (2006) and his colleagues adopted the three categories of regime, the result was that the higher per capita income enhances democratic transitions by moving from authoritarian regimes towards democracy or increasing the democratic nature of states, and increases the likelihood of democratic regimes (Epstein, Bates et al. 2006). Nevertheless, transitions to democracy create instability, poorer economic outcomes and ethnic violence. Robert D. Kaplan (2000) states that the society must be in good position otherwise the democracy will create political instability within the state (Kaplan and Rieff 2000). In addition, Amy Chua points out that, if only the minority benefit from the markets, the democratic transition will lead to political instability and conflicts between ethnic groups (Chua 2003).