This paper deals with one of the central debates in the recent literature of political economy: the cause-effect relationship between capitalist development and liberal democracy. It is divided into two sections. In the first part, we break away from the idea that democracy can rise anywhere....

According to mainstream economics, rational agents choose among alternatives that are supposed to be ranked and compared. This assumption is strongly criticized by sociologists and anthropologists; it may partly hold true only when the commercial transactions sphere establishes a uniform...