From Development to Democracy: The Transformations of Modern Asia

by Dan Slater

A central lesson of this book is that democratization need not emerge from the ashes of a collapsed authoritarian regime. In fact, one interpretation of our analysis is that we are better off growing democracy from the soil of strong existing authoritarian regimes, to avoid the difficult scenario of seeding democracy in the detritus of authoritarian collapse. If democracy is going to spread to the many corners of the world where authoritarian rulers still actively avoid it, it will have to be because those authoritarian rulers come to see democracy as compatible with their own self-interest. Even when teeming crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands bring down a despised dictator, there are virtually always incumbent political elites behind the scenes who wisely welcome a decisive democratizing change. To be ruled by an autocrat always means accepting the existential political uncertainty of living under a government both electorally irremovable and legally unbound and unrestrained.9 Democratization means swapping one set of political risks and uncertainties for another.10 Our point, however, is that democracy is not so risky for either the incumbent regime or society at large when it is pursued from a position of authoritarian strength.