Democracy’s Dividend Is the Right Kind of Growth
Authoritarian regimes can grow, but they can’t deliver what their citizens want and need.
A dam superpower.
Photographer: Howard Sochurek/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images(This is the fourth of a series of columns on economic growth and the challenges to democracy. Read the other parts here: The Democracy Dividend: Faster Growth; Hardliners Learn That Democracy Can Pay Off; Central Bankers Shouldn’t Have to Rescue Democracy.)
We are at a fraught point in history, one where it seems that country after country wishes to turn its back on the messiness, moral ambiguity and confusion that decision-making in representative democracy entails. Books with titles such as “Why Liberalism Failed” and “The Death of the West” herald a new consensus — forged by the global financial crisis and the rise of the People’s Republic of China — that autocracies produce better economic outcomes than democracies.