From Development to Democracy: The Transformations of Modern Asia

by Dan Slater

Authoritarian regimes that make genuine collective efforts to promote economic development, improve popular welfare, and build more predictable and durable political institutions should be offered the international community’s conditional encouragement rather than unrelenting pressure. By laying a stronger foundation for eventual stable democratic transition, gradual authoritarian strengthening is generally a preferable outcome to sudden and total authoritarian collapse. International advocates for democracy, in other words, should ironically be on the lookout for long-term democratic prospects in strong authoritarian regimes rather than cultivating and exploiting sources of authoritarian weakness to encourage a potentially disastrous regime collapse. The implication is not that authoritarian regimes must singly pursue economic development before countenancing democratization, however. As we have argued in this book, it is much easier and far more straightforward to democratize preemptively during relatively stable times than it is to continue to build up stronger political institutions and generate an impressive economic track record under perpetual authoritarian conditions.6 We insist that both of these approaches can be viable paths from the dismal equilibrium of weak and personalized authoritarianism to improved political stability and economic development.