Is Geography really Destiny?

The Rains of Dictators
When it comes to the distribution of democracy across the globe, it's mostly about the rainfall, a study suggests.

To get a metric for democracy, researchers used average ratings from an oft-cited political-science database called Polity 2. For the period 1965 to 2009, they found that there were just two democracies, Cyprus and Israel, and 14 "persistent" autocracies among countries with an average annual rainfall of less than 21½ inches. Between 21½ inches and 51 inches, there were 18 stable democracies (out of a total of 26 in the data set) and seven persistent autocracies. Above 51 inches, the balance tipped back to closed societies. That relationship persisted even when colonial history, the presence of oil and ethnic division were controlled for.

The authors argue that moderate rainfall and arable land create economies in which small farms produce grain and legumes above the subsistence level. In turn, the trading of crops helps a broad swath of the population to build up financial and educational capital, an important foundation of democracy. By contrast, the authors say, growing and storing food in arid or tropical lands presents challenges favoring plantations and large landholders, not a broader citizenry.

"Rainfall, Human Capital and Democracy," Stephen Haber and Victor Menaldo, working paper (April)

Comment by Roberto Wissai:
The thesis that geography impacts human behavior was given wide circulation after the success of Jared Diamond's book Guns, Gems, and Steel. The thesis is another version of the influence of environment. 

Nature versus Nurture or Free Will versus Predestination has been part of the landscape of a debate on What is like being Human. Are we at the mercy of the environment or we are the creature that can transcend the environment thanks to our free will and deep universal longings, one of which is democracy? Although the thesis that geography is destiny is not without merits, I think it selectively used data to fit into a preconceived notion. India has long been a democracy. There are nascent and budding democracies as well in Indonesia, Taiwan, and the Philippines. These countries have very high rainfall.

I think Man is a combination of Nature and Nurture. Overemphasis of one over the other does not reflect reality. Having said that, I recognize there is a tendency among those with autocratic bent to hold a materialistic, deterministic view of Man, of which Nazism and Communism were prime examples, but Man throughout ages has shown he does not fit into one theory and one view. He is wondrously protean and has proven time and again that he is more than a victim of his circumstances.

Wissai

Note by the commentator:

With this commentary, I showed to all the assholes and douche bags out there the superiority of my intellect. Unlike them, I could read critically. Most of them are not fit to carry my sandals and wipe my ass, yet some of them have the stupidity and temerity to enter a debate with me. There are two nitwits who fancy that they can argue, but over and over again I demolish their arguments and expose their ignorance, and they have to resort to humiliated silence. But one, in particular, would try again, I know. I am ready for him. There is another who is a coward but fantasizes that he is morally superior to me. I have exposed his hypocrisy.

All the bastards out there need to know that to attack me without due cause or try to exert power over me will invite a withering counter-attack from me.