Publication

This paper links the literature on economic growth with the study of illiberal democracy and military power by testing whether democracy's effect is contingent on the military holding political power. The author argues that democracy has a positive effect on GDP growth but only if the military does not hold political power. The study uses a panel fixed effects model and Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimations with a sample of more than 100 countries over a period of 25 years to obtain results supporting this hypothesis.