A Review on the Relationship Between Political Freedom and Economic Development

Abstract

The Arab Spring has urged reviewing the association of the political and economic variables. There is no consensus in the literature about this relationship. This article reviews the related literature and highlights some guidelines for forming a suitable model to study this relationship accounting for criticisms of various models. Thus, this study recommends that (1), empirically, democracy should be decomposed into its determinants, (2) economic development should include GDP per capita and the development quality indexes, (3) using the V-dem dataset could improve future studies' credibility because it avoids most pitfalls of rival datasets, (4) causality study aids in designing policies to improve economic stability, and (5) using a cross-sectional sample to emphasize the countries specifications` differences when studying the aforementioned relationship.

The Arab Spring has urged reviewing the association of the political and economic variables. There is no consensus in the literature about this relationship. This article reviews the related literature and highlights some guidelines for forming a suitable model to study this relationship accounting for criticisms of various models. Thus, this study recommends that (1), empirically, democracy should be decomposed into its determinants, (2) economic development should include GDP per capita and the development quality indexes, (3) using the V-dem dataset could improve future studies' credibility because it avoids most pitfalls of rival datasets, (4) causality study aids in designing policies to improve economic stability, and (5) using a cross-sectional sample to emphasize the countries specifications` differences when studying the aforementioned relationship.