China’s impressive economy is misleading. Autocracies, in general, do not make great economies. This article from Democracy Digest explores why. Here is an excerpt:

Does the messy business of democratic checks and balances, hearings and debates, judicial review and individual rights get in the way of economic development? asks Tom G. Palmer, executive vice president for international programs at Atlas Network, a partner of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

His recently published book with co-author and former NED Penn Kemble fellow Matt Warner, Development with Dignity: Self-determination, Localization, and the End to Poverty, put the thesis to the test again. Updating the database that Morton H. Halperin, Joseph T. Siegle, and Michael M. Weinstein assembled for their 2010 book The Democracy Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity and Peace, they found—again—that there simply is no autocratic advantage. When you avoid cherry picking and examine the median GDP growth rates for all the countries for which data are available between 1960 and 2018, you find that democracies have the advantage over autocracies, Palmer adds.

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