The economics of democracy

pp. 80-95

in: Howard P. Kainz, Democracy East and West, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1984

Abstract

What we call "democracy" in the Anglo-American and European sense, has developed as a matter of fact in a milieu of capitalistic economic structures: but is there any necessary relationship between capitalism and democracy? Is the present tie-in between a capitalistic economic backdrop and "Western democracy" anything more than an accidental fusion and mutual reinforcement of two historically evolving trends, one economic and the other political? And if their combination is accidental and thus dispensable, is the combination nevertheless fortunate and salutary, and thus worth mantaining in spite of considerable internal and external obstacles to such maintenance?