The paper examines the real per-capita growth effects of the quality of democracy, the rule of law, and capital flows in developing countries. The direct growth effects of democracy are positive and often statistically significant. Moreover, the estimates from a three-stage least-squares...

This introduction to a special issue of the Review of Development Economics provides a contextual setting to a collection of articles that originated in a conference on "Democracy, Participation, and Development" that was sponsored by the Program in Economic Policy Management (PEPM) at Columbia...