The Return of Great Power Rivalry: Democracy versus Autocracy from the Ancient World to the U.S. and China

by Matthew Kroenig

To put this finding in more concrete terms, what if China and Russia were to undergo a thoroughgoing transition to full democracy or the United States were to backslide into dictatorship? Given the above statistical models, we would predict that if China were to undergo a full transition to democracy in the future, the probability that it would be the most powerful state in the international system would increase twenty-fold. The consequences of complete democratization in Russia would be to increase more than eight times its chances of global hegemony. Contrariwise, a collapse of the democratic system in the United States and the rise of a dictatorship would make it twenty-five times less likely that Washington would hold the top spot.