IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/w8khb_v1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Have autocrats governed for the long term?

Author

Listed:
  • Millemaci, Emanuele
  • Monteforte, Fabio
  • Temple, Jonathan R. W.

Abstract

The short answer is: probably not. We infer the priorities of national governments from observed outcomes, constructing a statistical proxy for long-term benevolence. Using data between 1960 and 2019 for more than 100 countries, we show that, on average, democracies score more highly on our measure.We then investigate whether variation in long-term benevolence can explain the ‘autocratic gamble’ - the well-known tendency for growth rates to vary more widely across autocracies than across democracies. We show that the distribution of long-term benevolence under democracy first-order stochastically dominates its distribution under autocracy. Put differently, although there is an autocratic gamble in growth rates, there is no autocratic gamble in wider development outcomes. The rapid growth seen in some autocracies probably originates in regime self-interest rather than unusually benevolent leadership.

Suggested Citation

  • Millemaci, Emanuele & Monteforte, Fabio & Temple, Jonathan R. W., 2023. "Have autocrats governed for the long term?," SocArXiv w8khb_v1, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:w8khb_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/w8khb_v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/6582cd817094e90eb7a174a7/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/w8khb_v1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:w8khb_v1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.