| Title | From liberal economic policies to liberal political institutions? Democracy, development clusters and wellbeing |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Timothy Besley(author) |
| Torsten Persson (author) | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.31389/lsepress.tlc.p |
| Landing page | https://doi.org/10.31389/lsepress.tlc.p |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
| Publisher | LSE Press |
| Published on | 2025-10-16 |
| Short abstract | The period since the Washington Consensus has seen a gradual, though sometimes stuttering, growth in liberal political institutions that support free speech, open contests for power, and constraints on the arbitrary use of power. Meanwhile, economists and other social scientists have studied the interplay of economics and politics along alternative paths of development – paths associated with more or less solid underpinnings for a market economy and more or less peaceful resolutions of domestic conflict. Our chapter explores whether this research supports a consensus around the kind of political institutions, values, and norms that can produce flourishing economies and societies. This chapter includes responses to Tim Besley and Torsten Persson by Margaret Levi and Leonard Wantchekon. |
| Long abstract | The period since the Washington Consensus has seen a gradual, though sometimes stuttering, growth in liberal political institutions that support free speech, open contests for power, and constraints on the arbitrary use of power. Meanwhile, economists and other social scientists have studied the interplay of economics and politics along alternative paths of development – paths associated with more or less solid underpinnings for a market economy and more or less peaceful resolutions of domestic conflict. Our chapter explores whether this research supports a consensus around the kind of political institutions, values, and norms that can produce flourishing economies and societies. This chapter includes responses to Tim Besley and Torsten Persson by Margaret Levi and Leonard Wantchekon. |
| Language | English (Original) |
| THEMA |
|
| BISAC |
|
| LCC |
|
| Keywords |
|
Tim Besley is School Professor of Economics and Political Science and W. Arthur Lewis Professor of Development Economics at the London School of Economics (LSE). His main research interests are in studying how governments can more effectively design and deliver economic policies. He has extensive policy experience advising the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and, from 2006 to 2009, he served on the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee. He is also a member of the UK’s National Infrastructure Commission and was an academic convenor of the Oxford-LSE Commission on State Fragility, Growth and Development, and joint Chair of the LSE Growth Commission. He is a past President of the European Economic Association (EEA), Econometric Society and Royal Economic Society (RES).
Torsten Persson is a Swedish Research Council Distinguished Professor at the IIES, Stockholm University, and a Centennial Professor at LSE. His research often involves issues at the boundary between economics and other fields, mostly political science but also other social and medical sciences. Persson has experience of evaluating policies in deep crises – he was part of Sweden’s Economics Commission in the early 1990s and its Corona Commission in the early 2020s. He has served as the President of the Econometric Society and the EEA, and is currently a member of the European Research Council’s Scientific Council.
Margaret Levi is Emerita Professor of Political Science, Senior Fellow of Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and faculty fellow and former Sara Miller McCune Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University. She is co-director of the Stanford Ethics, Society, and Technology Initiatives. She is the winner of the 2019 Johan Skytte Prize and the 2020 Falling Walls Breakthrough. She has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the British Academy, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, and she served as president of the American Political Science Association (APSA). The most recent of her many books are In the Interest of Others (Princeton, 2013), co-authored with John Ahlquist, and A Moral Political Economy: Present, Past, Future (Cambridge University Press, 2021), co-authored with Federica Carugati. She writes about what makes for trustworthy governance in states and organisations and what evokes citizen compliance, consent, and dissent. She is currently engaged in projects to reconceptualise political equality, to reimagine property rights, and to develop a social science of care and caregiving.
Leonard Wantchekon is the James Madison Professor of Political Economy, Professor of Politics, and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is the Founder and President of the African School of Economics and the Pan African Scientific Research Council. His research centres on political economy, development economics and economic history, with regional focus on Africa and on substantive topics, such as democracy and development, education and social mobility, and the long-term social impact of slavery and colonial rule. Finally, Wantchekon is the 2023 winner of the Global Economy Prize, awarded by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, the BREAD and Research Affiliate at the NBER. He served as Vice President of the APSA, and is on the Executive Committee of the IEA.