Usually, if a country struggles economically it has a glaring issue with its governance. For example, Thailand. Its democracy has been shaky from the very beginning and the country suffered from frequent military coups. Hence, it is an example of a country quite stuck in the so called "middle income trap".
I wonder if there's a country where you don't see such glaring issues with its governance, yet economic performance has been underwhelming.
I'm not sure if countries like Japan or Italy counts, but both countries have had stellar performance in the past, just stagnated a bit in recent years.
Most of the southern african countries are fairly stably governed/democratic (as far as I know) but relative poor. Namibia and Botswana are the two I'm thinking of, though maybe their neighbors are similar I'm not sure.
These countries are still fairly rich for the continent though and seem to be growing nicely.
Ghana might be another example? Pretty poor country but fairly stable governance.
Costa Rica is maybe an example? Its government is generally stable and not especially corrupt.
However, GDP growth since 2010 looks pretty solid from the FRED graph: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCAGDPCRA646NWDB. So maybe its economic performance isn’t poor? GDP per capita is about $18k, so it’s on the high end of middle income countries too.
Costa Rica is rated very highly on most indexes of democracy, some even rating it ahead of the USA... So I think this one takes the cake.
I’m not sure it meets the metric of poor economic performance, but that’s up to you for that qualitative assessment.
One way to approach this is to separate institutional stability from growth dynamics. A country can have relatively predictable governance, rule of law, and low political volatility, yet still experience weak economic performance due to demographics, low productivity growth, or structural rigidities.
Japan is often cited in this context: governance quality is high and institutions are stable, but long-term growth has been constrained by aging, deflationary pressures, and limited productivity gains. Similar arguments are sometimes made for parts of Southern Europe, where governance is not fundamentally dysfunctional, but structural factors slow adjustment.
In that sense, underperformance does not necessarily imply poor governance, but rather limits on the economy’s ability to reallocate resources and adapt over time.
To be honest I think that very few countries in such a list. I guess Botswana, Egypt and Thailand are the only examples that come to mind.
About Thailand, I don't think that military coups are enough evidence of bad governance. One of the most impressive countries in the world, China, isn't a democracy after all.
"I'm not sure if countries like Japan or Italy counts"
Japan and Italy aren't middle income. If you just want rich stagnant countries, there are plenty: New Zealand, Germany, UK, Portugal, France, etc, most of the EU actually.
In what economic sense exactly? Sure in absolute terms its economy is large, but living standards and GDP per capita aren't anywhere close to the highest. US gdp per capita (PPP) is over 3 times that of China according to the World Bank.
China is absolutely impressive. Top dog in electric car technology, BYD surpassed Tesla in sales. China was able to even make its own smartphones with their own kirim processors before usa sanctions. Very few countries can do that. Chemical plants in China are destroying the european chrmical industry. Top dog in 5G basestations. etc, etc, etc.
Comparing with USA per capita is hardly a good criteria, I guess you would only chpose that to disqualify every other country, since none match USA and even Europe looks like a shithole in this criteria.
You could take any country and list their best industries.
Why? Does China only have to judged by low standards and expectations? There's even a Chinese speaking island next to it that's much more developed, and democratic. Nevermind South Korea and Japan.
I expected as such, simply because a country that has decent enough governance would eventually become quite wealthy given some time. Perhaps Botswana is on that path too, it's already one of the best run states in the entire continent.
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