Two Essays in the Political Economy of Development

This dissertation studies the political determinants of state and economic development. The first chapter examines the effect of democracy, or broad political representation, on state capacity development. Contemporary scholarship is divided on whether democracy facilitates state development. While some argue that narrow political representation is optimal for building state capacity, which subsequently enables economic growth, some point to a broad distribution of political power as key to long run state development. The first chapter develops a framework that integrates the two arguments and finds that the optimal breadth of political representation for state capacity growth widens at later stages of state capacity growth. The second essay appraises the effects that different political regime types have on technological catch-up in peripheral economies. Contemporary research on East Asia's economic transformation in the postwar era has demonstrated the critical role of the state in driving economic development. Yet it has failed to articulate why such developmental states emerged in East Asia and what political conditions enable or compel a state to adopt developmental policies. I present a model of developmental states as political actors and establish a novel causal link from regime type to policy choice to economic growth. A highly democratic regime produces an idle state, politically constrained from distortionary yet pro-growth interventions in the economy. An overly autocratic regime produces a predatory state, politically compelled toward interventions that are maximally extractive and stymie growth. An intermediate regime that is moderately democratic or autocratic enables growth-enhancing interventions while curbing purely extractive interventions.