Melbourne School of Government - Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1

Examining the link between democracy and inclusive economic growth in Southeast Asia

Putra, Fadillah ( 2017)

Embedded in all our assumptions and hopes for democracy is the belief that a democratic system will make life better, economically and socially, for its citizens. Given this almost universal assumption it is surprising how little we really know about the impact of democratisation upon the welfare of citizens and the variables linking the two. This thesis investigates the impact of democracy on Inclusive Economic Growth, and mainly questioning: “Does democracy matter in the delivery of larger and more effective social policies that improve inclusive economic growth? ”The four cases selected to empirically analyse the relationship among the three variables (democracy, social policy, and inclusive economic growth) are Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. The finding is social policy is one of the potential variables linking the two; especially when the development of democratic institution run stably and the vast majority of the people support it. In other words, social policy becomes an important variable to test the link between democracy and inclusive economic growth.