Wednesday, April 06, 2011

It All Comes Down To Rain

This article in Business Week is about a study looking for the root of democracy. Who would have thought that it all comes down to rain?

3 comments:

colson said...

Stanford University is a renowned Unversity. Professor Stephen Haber and his colleague are learned men. So I guess their research has to be serious.

That's why I suddenly saw the light.After centuries of authoritarian rule and bloody dictatorship with continuous serious droughts, immediately after '45 Germany has been blessed by a sharp change of climate. There must have been a lot of rain in West Germany ( the Bundesrepublik). While it stayed on dry in the DDR till 1990.

A similar story goes for Japan of course.

Shame, shame on all of us who couldn't see the obvious till Stephen and Victor did tell us :).

(By which I don't want to deny the ( growing) importance of water - if only in the conflict between Israel and the Arab countries.)

Harry Nizam said...

Hi Triesti,
Very interesting.
But it seems that the theory is not applicable all countries.
There are countries with lots of rainfall but do not adopt democracy like Vietnam, Myanmar, Cmabodia.

triesti said...

I havent read the actual study, but it seems like they chose the sample to support their theory. Like you guys said, it probably explain the desert countries, not countries such as belarus, cuba, vietnam etc. Oh well..