What agents control the transition to endogenous development and democracy?
Scholars have suggested three answers.According to the first, which is close to clas-
sic capitalist thinking, the vital factors are the opening up of markets and the spirit
of enterprise. According to the second, development results from a collective will
and a collective mobilization, which are usually state inspired. According to the
third, it is the existence of an open political system that plays the main role because
it prevents rulers from becoming divorced from their subordinates and gives prior-
ity to the basic needs of the collectivity rather than to private interests. If the latter
prevailed, there would be a crisis or a social breakdown. The idea of democracy
would lose much of its meaning if we did not adopt the third thesis, which is con-
sonant with the experience of the countries that were the main centers of eco-
nomic development in the West—namely, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and then
the United States.The existence of an open political system and the abolition of
absolute monarchy do more than the protestant spirit to explain the success of
these countries, whereas absolute monarchies reinforced by the spirit of the
Counter-Reformation were an obstacle to development in Catholic countries.

This comment brings us to a still more general theme. Whereas the classic
image of modernization depicts the triumph of reason against the obstacles of
particularism, privilege, and private violence, what I have defined as democratic
culture means transforming old into new. It means rejecting clean sweeps and en-
lightened despotism. It means mobilizing existing individuals and collectivities
and their demands and memories. Social life is like a tree whose leaves draw suste-
nance from exchanges with their environment and whose roots take nourishment
from the earth. We still contrast tradition with modernity, just as we contrast im-
mobility and movement, or even, in many cases, religion and the family with ex-
change-oriented economic activity governed by calculation. Let us reject this vi-
sion and redefine development not only as a combination of democracy and
growth but also, at a deeper level, as a combination of a cultural heritage and

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