A few months ago we noted a study which concluded that democracy may not be that important to prosperity. See Poli Sci profs say democracy isn't necessary for prosperity previously at this blog.
The science isn't settled, apparently. For now we see Strongman leaders make for weak economies, study shows. Excerpt:
Autocrats whose countries experienced larger than average economic growth were found only as frequently as you would predict based on chance alone.
In contrast, autocrats overseeing poor economic growth were found significantly more frequently than chance would predict.
There was no evidence to suggest dictators had a positive influence over growth trajectories in the five or ten years after taking power. ...
The same analysis, carried out on dictators overseeing poor economies, to see if they had merely found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, found instead that economic growth dropped significantly after the entry into power of an economically ‘bad’ autocrat.
In short, dictators were shown to have little influence in driving economies up, but often more influence in driving them down.
Confirmation bias has a strong influence on my own analytical abilities, so I'm going with the freedom-is-better theme.
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3:36 PM 10/7/2019
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