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    "label": "Visions of the Future from Leading Thinkers [Binder] [2]",
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    "title": "Visions of the Future from Leading Thinkers [Binder] [2]",
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        "Records of the Domestic Policy Council (Clinton Administration)",
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    "ocrText": "Freedom and Our Future\nPage 3\nMemorandum for the President\nAmartya Sen, February 25, 2000\nto increase the freedom of people to participate in economic activities, which is central to economic\nfreedom. The connections are very extensive. It is because of these interconnections that free and\nsustainable agency emerges as a generally effectual engine of development.\nDemocracy and the Value of Freedom\nFreedom, thus, has to be judged both as an end and as a means. The two perspectives can\ncomplement each other. Consider, for example, the role of democracy and political liberty.\nIt is sometimes asked whether political freedom is \"conducive to development.\" Indeed, a\nnegative answer to this question (including an often-articulated belief that democracy is inimical to\neconomic growth) has fuelled authoritarian political tendencies in different parts of the world - from\nEast Asia to Latin America. In assessing this line of argument, the first thing to note is that this\nway of posing the question misses the crucial recognition that political liberties and democratic\nrights are among the constituent components of development. Their relevance for development does\nnot have to be indirectly established through their contribution to the growth of GNP. Politically\nunfree citizens - whether rich or poor - are deprived of a basic constituent of good living.\nHowever, after acknowledging this central connection, we also have to subject democracy\nto consequential analysis, since there are other kinds of freedoms as well. It is worth noting in this\ncontext, that extensive cross-country comparisons have not provided empirical support for the belief\nthat democracy is inimical to economic growth. Indeed, the evidence is overwhelming that growth\nis helped by the friendliness of the economic climate rather than by the harshness of the political\nsystem.\n4 See for example Adam Przeworski et al, Sustainable Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge\nUniversity Press, 1995); Robert J. Barro, Getting It Right: Markets and Choices in a Free Society\n(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996)."
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