Critical Review

Running head: CRITICAL REVIEW
Critical Review
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1CRITICAL REVIEW
The article, “Economic Development and Democracy: The Modernisation Hypothesis
in sub-Saharan Africa” talks about the fact that the richer countries have the tendency of
improving the institution that helps in the development of their economy. The democracies
are more stable in those countries that have high level of the education. The article talks
about the fact that level of the primary schooling helps more in the determination of
democracy as compared to that of the per capita income (Bittencourt & Chisadza, 2015). The
article states the fact that democracy does not go on increasing with the level of the
development but is affected by the exogenous factors like the fall of the dictatorship or the
foreign pressure. The article has made use of panel data analysis for the African countries in
between the year 1960 and that of 2010 for the purpose of the research. The article has talked
about the fact that change in relation to the income per capita cannot help in explaining the
changes in the aspect of the democracy. The article has also stressed on the fact that the
democratic change can take place after the process of the recession as compared to that of the
rapid economic growth. The article has talked about the fact that there is evidence of that of
negative relationship in relation to the income-democracy that is obvious in the colonies
along with the resource-rich countries. The inferences that have been drawn on the basis of
the modernisation hypothesis are on the basis of the causal relationship in between the per
capita income and that of the democracy. The article has talked about the fact that the per
capita income cannot be used as a measure for the aspect of the economic development
because this can lead to the biased inference. The value of the article lies in the fact that the
previous studies used the aspect of the per capita income for measuring the economic
development. This article has made use of income per capita, education along with
urbanisation in order to find out about the element of the economic development in a country.
The article states that urbanization is positively related with the element of the democracy. It
helps in bringing out the fact that the hypothesis in relation to modernisation is true in the