Freedom Favors Development

Amartya Sen is the author of this piece. This piece is an update and revised version of a paper, "Freedoms and Needs" that originally appeared in The New Republic.

Harvard - Something of a "general theory" of the relationship between political liberty and economic prosperity has been articulated in recent years by that unlikely theorist Lee Kuan Yew, the former prime minister of Singapore. He is not alone in praising the supposed advantages of "the hard state" in promoting economic development literature. Even the sagacious Gunnar Myrdal's extensive skepticism, in Asian Drama, of what he called "the soft state" has sometimes been interpreted (rather unfairly to Myrdal) as a celebration of political toughness in the cause of good economics.

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