There is good news coming on this front from Democracy Digest

Deference to autocratic rulers is not only a bad idea for democracy: It’s terrible for the economy, too, according to a new analysis.

The authors of the study published in Leadership Quarterly analyzed the governments of 133 countries between 1858 to 2010, and found that autocrats were either damaging or inconsequential for the economy of their countries. Besides showing the poor economic outcomes of oppressive regimes, the study calls into question the idea of “benevolent dictators”—for instance Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew or Rwanda’s Paul Kagame—who are commonly believed to be good for the economy, notes Quartz’s Annalisa Merelli:

The researchers – from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Victoria University in Melbourne – used data from the Archigos dataset of leaders, which lists both the leaders of countries and the person with the most power in a country at any given time. ….The data was then cross-referenced with the Polity IV dataset, which establishes the kind of political government in place for 185 countries every year, defining whether the country is a democracy or an autocracy. For each year, countries are scored from 1 to 10. Scores below 6 indicate an autocratic regime, while democracies stand above six.

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