Democracy and development: a partisan approach

for years scholars have tried to find the magic key to latin american development, mainly through economic theory and economic institutions. in this paper we propose a different approach: we claim that in the long run, the rotation in government of right and left-wing parties favors development. we assume that development combines growth and increased social well-being, that right-wing parties prioritize growth while left-wing parties prioritize social well being, and that there is a trade off between growth and income distribution in the long run. this hypothesis is tested empirically using a simple of 122 countries, using the united nations' human development index (hdi) as a proxy for development.