What Role Do Autocratic States Play in Development?

According to Assistant Professor Mahvish Shami, Co-Convenor on the Economic and Political Development in Developing Countries online certificate course from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), the question of whether autocracy or democracy is better for developing countries is not as simple as you might think. While some autocratic regimes have, in fact, produced good rates of growth and created policies that offer genuine long-term benefits, it’s important to take a deeper look at those success statistics. 

Transcript

Developing countries around the world have a mix of both autocratic and democratic regimes. So that begs the question: which is better for development? 

If we look at east Asia, we find that they’ve had phenomenal rates of growth, particularly in China, all with an autocratic regime. China alone has pulled millions of people out of poverty, which is no small feat.

So that essentially makes us wonder whether autocrats are in fact better for development. And in fact, in the literature, you find that there is such an idea that autocrats are better for development, that it resulted in the creation of something known as The Beijing Consensus.

And what that argues is that you first need an autocrat to develop and then once you’ve reached a certain level of development, you can democratize.

So, let’s start by looking at why we would expect autocrats to be better for development. And there are two big arguments for this. First of all, autocratic regimes are believed to be strong insulated states that do not face political pressure, unlike their democratic counterparts. As a result, they’re able to implement policies which are politically contentious and difficult, but can have very positive developmental outcomes. An example of that would be infant industry protection. The east Asian countries used infant industry protection quite successfully. And when the time came, they withdrew that protection and everyone was well aware that the country will withdraw it and the government was strong enough to do so. As a result, they used those policies successfully and saw high levels of growth. Democratic countries experimenting with infant industry production did not do as well.

The second argument has to do with their time horizon. Some argue that autocratic regimes have a much longer time horizon and therefore can institute policies, which have long-term benefits. Democratic regimes, on the other hand, face elections every few years and therefore, their time horizon might be limited to every election. 

But what does the evidence suggest? Let’s start with a table looking at countries which have achieved big growth success. Amongst countries that have done that, ninety per cent of those were autocratic regimes and only 10 of them were democratic. That seems to suggest that autocratic regimes are, in fact, better for development. But let me show you another statistic. 

This table shows us countries which have had phenomenal growth failure, and as you can see, only autocratic regimes failed, not a single democracy had big growth failure. That muddles the water quite a bit.

So let’s have a look at the overall data. Amongst autocratic regimes, while 10 per cent had big growth success, eleven per cent had big growth failure and seventy-nine per cent fell in the middle. Looking at democratic regimes, we find that while 8 per cent had phenomenal growth success, ninety-two per cent fell in the middle, and zero per cent failed.

Where does this argument come from? Why is there this belief that autocrats are better for development? The big problem may lie in how you ask the question and I’ll tell you what I mean by that. So if you look at this table, here I’m asking the question that amongst countries that have had big growth success, how many of those were autocratic regimes? And the answer becomes ninety per cent of countries with big growth success are autocratic regimes. 

But let me ask the question slightly different. In this next table, I’m now asking the question that amongst autocratic regimes, how many had big growth success? And now the answer becomes ten per cent. So it’s not as phenomenally great. 

Moreover, when I asked the question that amongst democratic regimes, how many had phenomenal failure? We find the answer is zero.

So what this data essentially is telling us is that this idea that autocrats achieve great development or development success is actually the exception rather than the rule. And if I was a betting person, I would actually hedge my bet on a democracy because, while it might be true that my chances of having phenomenal growth success are not very high, they’re only at 8 per cent, I have a zero per cent chance of experiencing big growth failure. 

Most likely, I’m going to fall in the middle, where I will have a steady growth rate, which will probably last well into the future.