Social Cohesion, Institutions, and Growth

March 12, 2006 by News Editor

William Easterly, Department of Economics, New York University, and Center for Global Development, Washington, DC.

Jozef Ritzen, Office of the President, Maastricht University.

Michael Woolcock, Development Research Group, The World Bank, and Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

The Development Research Institute (DRI) Papers - Draft, November 2005

Available online as PDF file [33p.] at: http://www.nyu.edu/fas/institute/dri/DRIWP17.pdf

“…..Policy and institutional quality are to a large extent endogenous. While the truth of this statement is familiar to most development scholars, the implications of it have drawn relatively little empirical attention. Understanding more about this relationship matters, because “poor institutional quality” and “failure to implement better policies” are so frequently identified as the causes of growth collapses, endemic poverty, and civil conflict.

Specifically, we argue that one of the primary reasons why even good politicians in countries all over the world, but especially in low-income countries, often enact bad policies is that they experience significant social constraints on their efforts to bring about reform. These constraints are shaped by the degree of ‘social cohesion’ within their country. We show that social cohesion determines the quality of institutions, which in turn has important impacts on whether and how pro-growth policies are devised and implemented.

A country’s social cohesion is essential for generating the confidence and patience needed to implement reforms: citizens have to trust the government that the short-term losses inevitably arising from reform will be more than offset by long-term gains. …”

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