The Democracy Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity and Peace

Morton H. Halperin, Senior Vice President, Center for American Progress; Director, Open Society Policy Center; Former Director of Policy Planning, US Department of State (1998-2001); Co-Author, The Democracy Advantage

Brief Description of Event:

Uncovering 40 years of hard, empirical data from China and India to Chile and Iraq, The Democracy Advantage argues that poor democracies surpass poor autocracies in every economic measure. The book also offers dramatic evidence that democracies are less likely to fight each other and that terrorists more often find safe havens in authoritarian countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.

The Democracy Advantage provides key insights into pressing contemporary policy questions, such as: Should the US be promoting democracy in the Arab and developing world? What are the tradeoffs between national security and democracy promotion? How can the war on terrorism be fought more effectively? Is the Millennium Challenge Account’s approach of supporting to countries that are “ruled justly” well grounded? How can the world make more substantive advances toward the Millennium Development Goals, which set out to reduce global poverty by half?