I’m reading an interesting book by an Irish economist, David McWilliams (who is currently visiting SA) called Renaissance Nation. In it, McWilliams tries to explain Ireland’s remarkable economic growth – the fastest among Western nations for the last few decades – with reference to the changing Irish mindset. His theory is that as Irish people became more open-minded, tolerant, and liberal, and less religious, insular, and prejudiced, their country’s economy grew. A more tolerant attitude led to economic growth.
Yet a recent study in the US and UK found the reverse – it found that voters in economically weakening areas tended to vote conservative and voters in economically strengthening areas tended to vote for the left. In other words, McWilliams thinks that tolerant attitudes towards immigrants, women’s empowerment, and so on, cause economic growth, while the other authors suggest that economic growth causes tolerance.
It’s an interesting question, and one with implications for South Africa. Certainly as apartheid-era attitudes towards gender, race, sexuality, and morality liberalised in the 1990s the economy grew rapidly. But economic slowdown has come alongside a backlash against everything from women’s rights to immigration. McWilliams would say that a better mindset and a live-and-let-live attitude would boost SA’s economy. But others would say that Zuma’s economic disaster has undermined South African’s attitudes.
