Democracy Vs. Autocracy

 

Among economists and political scientists, the importance of democracy on economic growth is very arguable; some think that democracy is good for only developed countries, and it is neutral, perhaps negative, to economic growth in impoverished countries compared to other autocratic countries which have proficient governments such as China, while the others are of opinion that democracy leads to significant increase of economic growth, even developing countries. However, nowadays, there are much more researches supporting support the second view that actually democracy is able to help countries develop its economic effectively.

From the research of Daron Acemoglu, Suresh Naidu, James A Robinson and Pascual Restrepo “Democracy causes economicdevelopment?” which is published on VOX website, not only autocracy countries with good governments can make a positive growth on GDP per capita, but also democratic countries. This argument is supported by certain evidences, provided in their work, of non-democratic countries which have changed their regimes to democracy, and they succeeded in bringing about considerable rise of GDP per capita.

Although capitalism and democracy are economic system and regime which are mostly used throughout the world, there still are many economists and social scientists believe that autocracy are better for economic growth, if those autocratic countries have good governments. For example, China under the leading of Deng Xiaoping had a great growth in GDP as well as modern China’s economic which has grown continually under Xi Jinping. However, as I mentioned above, with today’s knowledge, aside from autocracy, democracy can enhance economic growth as well. Therefore, to answer which regime are the most useful for countries we should concern about further factors besides increase of GDP.

A number of researches show that, on the one hand, economic growths of countries under autocracy fluctuate wildly over the time; in other words, if autocratic countries are under the control of good leader, they will considerably benefit from appropriate policies, but, reversely, their economic will extremely be hindered in case they get a bad leader. On the other hand, the growths of democratic countries are more stable, but in the average term growths of the both regimes are nearly equal. This means that regarding risk in economic growth, democracy is better than autocracy to people who are risk avoiders – and most behavioral economic researches prove that the majority of people are risk avoiders, whereas just some people are risk takers.

Moreover, though autocracy can accelerate economic growth, there is something lost by this regime. For Instance, Germany under tenure of Adolf Hitler, Fascism dictator, was very powerful, but this great had to trade-off with invaluable things like lives of Jews. This World War II tragedy occurred because no one knew what Hitler did to bring German to power. It is very easy to control people, so there is nobody can act against Dictators, and sometimes it leads to miserable disaster. Note that under autocracy the effect “polarisation”, which I commented in Pop’s blogpost “Really? Can you explain it to me?” can take place easily.

 

Therefore, to me, on a regular basis, democracy is better than autocracy due to all reasons taken. However, all of my arguments base on today’s knowledge, so if in the future new breakthrough knowledge take place, my opinion may change.

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Reference

Acemoglu, D. Naidu, S. Restrepo, P. Robinson, J. (2014, May 19). Democracy causes economic development?. Retrieved May 28, 2014 from VOX website : http://www.voxeu.org/article/democracy-and-growth-new-evidence

Visuthisakchai S. (2014, May 23). Really? Can you explain it to me?. Peter AEP Blogspot. Retrived May 28, 2014 from http://peteraep.blogspot.com/2014/05/pollution-absorbing-poster.html