Via Doug Ireland, this study debunking the connection between economic liberalization and political liberalization is really interesting stuff:
Economic growth has traditionally been thought to promote democratization by making strategic coordination easier, as communications technology improves, news media become more diverse and the citizenry more educated. But in recent years some savvy regimes have learned how to cut the cord between growth and strategic coordination, allowing the former without having to worry about the latter.
Their trick is to ration carefully the subset of public goods that facilitate political coordination, while investing in others that are essential to economic growth. The "coordination goods" that they need to worry about consist of things such as political and civil rights, press freedom and access to higher education. "Standard public goods" include public transportation, primary and secondary education, and public health; all of which contribute to economic growth and pose relatively little threat to the regime.
The authors looked at the trajectory of about 150 countries between 1970 and 1999. What they found wasn't great:
- The suppression of coordination goods is great for autocrats. An autocrat who authorizes freedom of the press and allows for civil liberties reduces his chance of surviving for another year by 15-20%.
- The new breed of autocrats has become far more sophisticated about suppressing goods. Where they used to disallow everything, leaving their citizens enraged as well as impoverished, now they simply keep control over coordination goods while allow for free use of public goods. That tends to keep the citizenry relatively happy, happy enough, in any case, that they're not going to risk life and limb to fight the regime.
- The connection between suppressing coordination goods has a linear, direct relationship to the onset of liberal democracy. The more autocracies repress coordination goods, the longer the lag between development and democracy. Think Iran and China.
The whole thing is worth a read. The world may be getting flatter, but that's no guarantee it'll get freer, and that realization is going to mean some pretty serious overhauls in how we deal with repressive regimes.
