The paper aims at investigating the concepts of democracy and development. While focusing on the definitions of the two concepts, it also aims at finding a correlation and interlinks that can be mutually beneficial for each other. The paper begins by discussing some of the major debates surrounding democracy and development in the current scenario of globalization where development of one part of the world cannot be seen as independent of the other parts. Moreover, it also focuses on the importance of inclusive approach towards development which makes it completely compatible with democracy because democracy stands on the principle of inclusivity. In the process, this paper also analyzes the role of global actors like DAC countries as well as the emerging economies like India and China in shaping the development scenario. The change in the development debate with the emergence of these new actors is an important subject to explore because it also changes the aid conditionality. The traditional DAC donors promoted democracy as a precondition for giving foreign aid but the new and emerging donors are not putting any conditionality so this is becoming an important issue that can be further explored by future research. Hence the paper sets a background for analyzing the development debate and the changing nature of aid conditionality. Given the circumstances, what can be the future of democracy? Would it still be seen as a prerequisite for development or there would be an alternative approach to it? These are some of the questions that can be pondered upon after reading this paper.
Development, Democracy, DAC countries, Foreign Aid, human development
