INTRODUCTION There have been enormous efforts to spread democracy as a political system throughout the world by developed democratic countries and international development organizations, including the World Bank. In the late 1990s, the United States alone spent over half a billion dollars promoting democratic expansion around the world (Diamond, 2003). This was done considering that democratic system leads to development. As a result, at the end of the 20th century we witnessed an enormous political transformation towards democracy. In recent decades, a large number of countries have adopted democracy as a political system. However, a big question remains: to what extent can democracy lead to the development of a country? At this stage, some people also criticize the democratization effort by claiming that it is done without considering the context of a country, sometimes democracy is not ideal for all countries and it is an effort to eliminate the diversity of the political system. Studying the literature regarding the debate, we found a paradoxical relationship between democracy and development. Some argue that democracy has failed to deliver expected development outcomes. While others pointed out that democracy has a considerable impact on development. Another group of people argues that the shape of the political system actually has no impact on the development process. On the verge of these debates, some development institutions and academics shed light on why democracy does not work properly and what measures should be taken to make it more effective in bringing about effective development of developing countries. Accordingly, this paper is an effort to revisit the different views on the impact of democracy...... middle of the paper...... Lebanon: University Press of New England [for] Middlebury College Press.Sen , A. ( 1999). Democracy as a universal value. Journal of Democracy, 10.Sen, A. (2011). Development as freedom. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Transparency International-TI (2012), Corruption Perceptions Index-2012. TransparencyInternational, London.United Nations Development Programme-UNDP (2013), Human Development Report 2013.United Nations Development Programme, New York.Available at: hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2013_EN_complete.pdf [accessed 1 ° November 2013]Mondo Banca (2005). Economic growth in the 1990s: Learning from a decade of reform. World Bank, Washington, DC. Available at: http://www1.worldbank.org/prem/lessons1990s/ [accessed 5 October 2013]Zakaria, F. (2007). The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (Revised Edition). New York: W. W. Norton.
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