Paper short abstract:

The paper analyzes both theoretically and empirically the association between economic growth and the construction of more stable institutions, considering African and South American Countries.Finally,it will be discussed whether more stable institutions improve economic growth or not.

Paper long abstract:

This paper tries to analyze both theoretically and empirically the association between economic development and the construction of more stable institutions, considering African and South American Countries. In this sense, it will be observed the main political rules of some countries of our sample: political systems (presidentialism, parliamentarism), political forms of representation (proportional, majoritarian) and political party systems (multipartism, single party, and two parties). Finally, on the other direction of causality, it will be discussed whether more stable institutions - in its many levels - improve economic growth or not. In order to do this analysis it will be developed an econometric model taken into account the importance of some political variables like the number of the veto players and others already mentioned for the economic growth process of the countries chosen.