TY - BOOK ID - 99995829 TI - One road to riches? : how state building and democratization affect economic development PY - 2021 SN - 1009053698 1009054554 1009062654 1009062859 PB - Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, DB - UniCat KW - Nation-building. KW - Democratization. KW - Economic development KW - Democratic consolidation KW - Democratic transition KW - Political science KW - New democracies KW - Stabilization and reconstruction (International relations) KW - State-building KW - Political development UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:99995829 AB - Building effective state institutions before introducing democracy is widely presumed to improve different development outcomes. Conversely, proponents of this "stateness-first" argument anticipate that democratization before state building yields poor development outcomes. In this Element, we discuss several strong assumptions that (different versions of) this argument rests upon and critically evaluate the existing evidence base. In extension, we specify various observable implications. We then subject the stateness-first argument to multiple tests, focusing on economic growth as an outcome. First, we conduct historical case studies of two countries with different institutional sequencing histories, Denmark and Greece, and assess the stateness-first argument (e.g., by using a synthetic control approach). Thereafter, we draw on an extensive global sample of about 180 countries, measured across 1789-2019 and leverage panel regressions, preparametric matching, and sequence analysis to test a number of observable implications. Overall, we find little evidence to support the stateness-first argument. ER -