Relationship Between Colonialism, Good Governance, and Economic Development

            Mary-Catherine Zachary

PL SC 150

Hawkins

I have chosen a couple key indicators that I think will best identify the relationship between colonialism, “good governance,” and economic development. Colonialism is the control or governing influence over a dependent country or territory.  “Good governance” is how public institutions conduct public affairs and manage public resources in order to guarantee the realization of human rights. Economic development is a sustained increase in the standard of living of a country’s population resulting from changes and improvements in education, infrastructure, and technology. I believe that each of these factors have a relatively significant effect each other. The two indicators that I have chosen are; exports of goods and services and imports of goods and services.

            Imports and exports are a good indicator of economic development and growth. Without imports and exports, these countries would not be growing and strengthening their economies because they wouldn’t be making any money. I chose the countries of Libya, Mexico, Brazil, France, United States of America, United Kingdom, Australia, and Haiti. These countries are all different, but the number of imports and exports all seem to be in correlation with strength of their economy in each. Almost every single country we got indicators for had a positive growth in their imports and exports, with the exception of Haiti and Australia.

            On January 12, 2010, Haiti was shocked with a huge earthquake that wiped out thousands of people’s homes, schools, businesses, and more. The earthquake was a 7.0 magnitude and struck less than 10 miles from Haiti’s major port city, Port-au-Prince. This earthquake is what slowed down the economy of Haiti. Imports and exports, especially exports, were slowed down because the country had very few resources to provide goods and services at that point in their history. It makes sense that their imports and exports would go down a significant amount.

            Colonialism, good governance, and economic development all go hand in hand when developing an economy. If used properly, each can speed up the economic growth of a developing country. At some point, however, colonialism can become a bad thing if the country is being used solely for the welfare of another country. A country must be able to work on its own in order to have a stable economy.