| dc.description | This research project was supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Grant M13-0559:1, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg,V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to Wallenberg
Academy Fellow Staffan I. Lindberg, Grant 2013.0166. David Altman also thanks the Millennium Nucleus for the Study of Stateness and Democracy in Latin America (RS130002), and FONDECYT’s Regular Project N.1141230. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the REPAL-Montevideo (2015), at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies (2016), and LASA (2016). We are indebted to Ana Arjona, Fernando Bizzarro, Michael Coppedge, Chonghyun Choi, Ben Dennison, Laura Gamboa, Sebastián Garaycoa, Scott Mainwaring, Kristin
Ignacio Mamone, McKie, Gemma McNulty, Eduardo Méndez, Gerardo Munck, Ana Petrova, George Tsebelis, Samuel Valenzuela for their valuable comments. | sv |
| dc.description.abstract | Economic growth has become one of the leitmotivs academicians and pundits ask once and
again to assess democratic endurance over time. While large portion of the literature posits that
economic growth is positive for democracy (eg. Przeworski et al. 2000), for other scholars it is a
profoundly destabilizing force (eg. Olson 1963; Huntington 1968). This paper fills these
contrasting views asking whether economic growth can undermine democratic competition. We
hypothesize that the relation between economic growth and party competition is mediated by
the strength of political institutions and free expression. Economic growth promotes
incumbency advantage. Rulers can artificially extend this advantage by narrowing the space for
negative coverage and dissident voices as long as they have political room for maneuvering. We
leverage exogenously-driven growth in Latin America to test this argument. Over the past two
decades, the region experienced accelerated growth as a result of a global commodity boom.
Using data for 18 Latin American countries during this period, we show that faster economic
growth led to significant increases in incumbency advantage in the legislature only where free
speech was under attack. Our findings have important implications for literatures on
democratization, natural resources, and economic voting. | sv |
