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We see litters of articles and papers from liberal media that democracy is globally dying. While I don't believe this is happening right away, could most democracies become less so in the future?
The German YouTuber Kraut some time ago had suggested that the political turmoil in liberal democracies is largely a result of the collapse of the USSR and with it, the Cold War consensus of combatting communism which unified various different groups.
I don't think American liberals are particularly holding up democratic principles in their own domain either, with how they deplatform and censor their opponents. Essentially, they're really just consolidating their electoral power while trying to protect the thin sheen of freedom in America. This bias extends across the US establishment. If you look at the highest-earning zipcodes they've all flipped massively to the democrats over the past few decades. Same is true if you look at the Ivy League. Seen in this light, the FBI was merely following the trend when they raided Ryan Kelley's home and other such harassment campaigns will not face scrutiny because a large portion of the US elite agree with the FBI targeting their political opponents. This is why they refuse to let Jan 6 die, it was certainly a riot, but nowhere close to a coup. We know what a real coup looks like from the recent Sri Lankan crisis. In South Korea, gender wars and the excessive divide over feminism has effectively become a major electoral talking point, although President Yoon Suk-yeol is married to a career woman himself who doesn't wish to be addressed as First Lady and has 0 kids with him. The state of the Koreas, one being a depressing totalitarian state and the other being a depressing, hyper consumerist protectorate of the US almost feels like an ill fated destiny. Even in India, the progressive pressure has generated a lot of culture wars of its own, where the ruling BJP's base perceive liberals as being sympathetic to Pakistan while levelling every epithet against India which would also be relevant to their archrival, and have reacted strongly. Couple with that the malthusian growth rates and the neoliberal decay preceding their rise to electoral power from being just another one of many parties in the country. But Russia and China, the "authoritarian competitors to the free world", are both strong societies, I can't imagine something like 1CP being done away so quickly if it was instituted in the US. They don't have to deal with electoral politics and do not have to deal with culture wars. And with an ascendant China, its proximity to China might tempt India to remodify its political institutions to have a shot at uplifting its hundreds of millions from poverty.
Now I'm not saying culture wars will end democracies, but its probably a symptom of decadence in democratic societies combined with the rise of social media highlighting our differences with millions of our own countrymen. Maybe I'm young and only speaking from my own limited experience? Curious to know what others think.
Logically, shouldn't we expect powerful absolutist/totalitarian states to dominate, ceteris paribus?
I think it was only favourable geography that shielded Britain from autocracy and let democracy get so strong. They were left alone to focus totally on naval power. Everyone else who tried this got pummelled (Netherlands, Carthage and Athens for example). They weren't islands. They had to divide their attention between sea and land. Maxxing out naval power, bringing in the trade money and having accessible coal turned out to be the dominant strategy, if you can avoid being invaded by a stronger land power while you build up.
If it weren't for British naval power, French royal or Napoleonic absolutism would've taken over Europe and the world. The British were the ones who paid for the Austrians and Prussians to impale themselves on French bayonets.
Because of that naval power and a great deal of luck the United States got the best parts of an entire continent to rule and a zero-threat hemisphere. There's no more fortunate nation on the planet - of course their inherited suboptimal quirks will survive. If it weren't for vast Anglo-American resources, Germany would've won both world wars and cemented authoritarianism as the reigning world ideology. The Germans got outspent 2:1 in both world wars. It's very hard to see how the Allies win if you take away half their resources for a 'fair' fight. We saw what happened when it was just France and Britain vs Germany, just two global empires vs a single oil-poor state no larger than Texas. Germany trounced them and the Benelux, Denmark, Norway and Poland.
Due to incredible geographical and historical luck, democracy and liberalism managed to snowball their way to global dominance despite being less competitive than authoritarian/totalitarian systems. If there was a land bridge between France and Britain, Britain would've just been another Eurasian land power like Spain or Sweden rather than an unstoppable liberal juggernaut. We would all be living in one party states today.
Liberalism and democracy has obvious issues with incentives: loot the country while you're in charge to deny it to the other side. Or loot the country to bribe your voters. It divides the country between parties and opens up avenues for foreign interference. Poland-Lithuania dabbled with liberalism on the Continent and got partitioned. Switzerland only survived due to favourable defensive geography. Illiberal states can more easily mobilize the population for offensive wars, grow stronger and repeat the process. For competitiveness between equals, you need militarism and a centralized state. You need to devote a larger fraction of the pie to military power than the enemy, you can't just be the US and have an economy so big you win conflicts just by entering them. This isn't to say that authoritarian systems are perfect or even desirable, just that they're more competitive when they're not faced with innately stronger opponents.
This bodes ill for the looming conflict with China, the first time the democracies face a power their own size. Naturally, it started with a disastrous defeat in that delusional liberals decided to transfer our manufacturing base to China on the basis that this would somehow make them liberalise. There's an echo of Munich in that. No matter that China guns down liberal protestors in Tiananmen or starts the Third Taiwan Straits crisis in 1996-7, they just ignore evidence and invest China into becoming the world's greatest manufacturing power (which had been the US's crowning achievement for over a century). I personally blame multinationals bribing foolish policymakers for this mega-disaster but it's still a failure of liberalism to allow this to happen.
Maybe we get ridiculously lucky again. Maybe we can coast on previous victories. But I'm doubtful.
Autocracies are good at mobiliziation: launching ambitious campaigns, overthrowing previous government, suppressing dissent, quick small annexations (bites). They are not good at sustained growth over controlled territories (in fact even sustained resource extraction).
Historically, most expansionist endeavors of past autocracies had failed either immediately or via slow degradation. Aside from counterfactuals, what real cases do you have in mind of successful autocracies? And of course, it depends on how we measure performance: if we consider absolute values, than autocracies might boast their mobilization spikes; but if we integrate area under the curve, they loose.
Notation: By democracy here I mean simply operation of a representative assembly, by autocracy – strong hierarchy, branching out from a single ruler. Not speaking about welfare state, universal suffrage, etc.
From theoretical perspective, every enterprise, involving collective action, will suffer from free riding and principal agent problems. In both regimes this is solved via negotiation -- first you have to arrive at agreement, then you need a commitment device to secure it. Autocrats do this in the background: build satiate (coup-proof) elites around them by reward and punishment -- but it is always a precarious personal-trust-based balance. Democracies make negotiation and commitment more sable via institutionalization. Part of the process which is open to public, is just a spectacle; the point is that by making process more formal, it's easier to track maneuvers of all actors, and quickly react by forging coalitions. Even modern autocracies nowadays use nominal, publicly visible parties as a commitment device.
Edit: China has been growing fast for only ~30 years and still haven't achieved US GDP per capita. Initial growth is a sign-up bonus for capitalistic approach, the game starts when growth saturates.
The Russian and Chinese empires were doing pretty well, growing for centuries. The latter collapsed because of the British, the former collapsed because of the Prussians/Germans (who themselves did very well up until they started facing the British). And when the British and other Europeans arrived to pull the rug out from underneath everyone else, they ruled their colonies autocratically.
I don't understand what you're talking about commitment devices. There are internal factions in all parties and states, from the US democratic party to the CCP. The methods the CCP uses to coordinate are more centralized and straight forward than what the US Democrats do because they enjoy the advantages of deciding on a central strategy. A strong paramount leader can say "Hide our strength and bide our time" and they'll actually execute the strategy. If you don't obey the party, you get imprisoned or sent off to Inner Mongolia. There's no Chinese Manchin holding up Xi's legislative agenda. There are bottom-up elements too, they let local areas try out various economic ideas to see if they work before imposing them nationwide. It's a little like Auftragstaktik, 'get semiconductors produced, we'll give you some money, make it happen and we'll promote you'.
The Democrats or Republicans have all these people pushing on them because they're less centralized. You have cliques like the Project for a New American Century plotting to start random wars in the Middle East. You have the Tea Party plotting to wreck the government. You have various wings of both parties blatantly bribing voters by printing out money and giving it away. Of course there are factional interests in China too - some people allege that One Belt One Road is about pandering to China's construction-industrial complex. But it clearly serves their national strategy as well as factional interests. Factions in America are much stronger and the country is much more divided.
Expecting China to reach US GDP per capita in under 30 years is ridiculous. In 1989, Chinese GDP per capita was $407, the US was at $22814. That they've narrowed a 50x difference to <4x is extremely impressive, especially considering that America has a host of geographic and historical advantages. It is not easy to create hundreds of millions of jobs.
No. Russian Empire displayed noticeable growth only during the short period of industrialization after 1880. P. Gregory attributes much of it to extensive measures:
As for impact of autocracy, most Russian rulers were hardcore conservatives and fiercely opposed to any innovation. Witte, the main engineer of industrialization, was fortunate enough to be tolerated by Nicholas II; Stolypin, who had more ambitious plans, wasn’t so fortunate.
src: The Industrialization and Economic Development of Russia through the Lens of a Neoclassical Growth Mode, pdf
WWI was a proximate cause of 1917 revolution, but the meaningful cause has been pending systematically since revolution of 1905 (similarly, prompted by defeat from Japan): backward institutions and incompetent uncompromising ruler. I’d be glad to share more details, if you wish. Open to counter evidence.
Edit: formatting
Territorially and demographically the Russian empire was growing for centuries, that was what I was primarily thinking of. However, it still displayed impressive (but sub British) industrial growth and labour productivity.
https://ideas.repec.org/p/hig/wpaper/199-hum-2020.html
The authors argue that Soviet historiography sought to create the impression that Russia was backward, exaggerating legitimate industrial weakness (which it had, not being as close to the traditional centres of wealth and Atlantic ports in Western Europe). However, Russian state-sponsored investments in metallurgy, alchohol and petrochemicals put those sectors on par with the British.
Furthermore, I'd argue that the 1905 war was ultimately caused by logistical difficulties innate in having to supply an army all the way across Siberia over 1 railway. Russia has a natural disadvantage in naval power too (rarely having good ports and focusing mostly on land), so that would complicate fighting a naval war on the other side of the world! The Japanese were closer and fairly well-organized themselves, it's not unforeseeable that they could win a war in Manchuria, right next door.
Great paper, thank you! It provides much more detailed and up-to-date view of the imperial industry, than the book I cited (by Paul Gregory, who is a renowned scholar and doesn’t belong to an early-soviet tradition of downplaying tzarist achievements).
output weights, was at 81.9 per cent of the U.K. level, […] on a par with France’s and significantly superior to Italy’s.
That’s it. Vodka has always been a Russian superpower. It also accounted for a huge share of tax revenues (around 30% !) in both imperial and soviet govts.
High labour productivity is a surprise to me. That said, the article shows that productivity varied a lot across industries, and ~70% of population was still employed in a much more backward agriculture, which spoils per capita figures.
They support the evidence for monopolies (which I attribute to state policy and more directly to the tzar and his cronies), but also note it wasn’t a distinct issue (if issue at all) of autocracy. This also downplays my argument.
All that data however doesn’t elucidate the connection between autocrat and his economic policy. The growth was absent before 1880, and I believe afterwards it was only impeded by autocrats. Railroad construction – a major industrialization booster – was initiated and done almost solely by Witte – a savvy technocrat, whom Nicholas despised and eventually pushed into resignation. Stolypin, who tried to modernize agriculture, faced fierce resistance from status-quo factions. Arms industry during WWI was also dominated by Romanovs' cronies, with other factories almost staying idle, when they could contribute.
As for 1905, defeat from Japan fueled public sentiment, but it wasn’t decisive at all. The general strike of 1905 was precipitated by many decades of struggle: Bloody Sunday, local worker strikes, peasant arsons, socialist revolutionary activities, etc. The public opinion had been formed long ago, and refined into various (unofficial) parties. Their proclamations and complaints were focused on the tzar’s incompetence and intransigence. It’s a long story, but this summary is close to my perception
If the last paragraph appears too handwaving, I can bring examples from the book (in a separate message)
Oh I'm not dissing your book, that was just their general argument which I was summarizing.
I think Russia was a successful autocracy. They faced a much more challenging geography than the Western Europeans, the area they got to take over was not the fertile Americas with endless rivers but cold and infertile Siberia. They didn't get any of the good Atlantic ports. They mostly faced the strongest non-European powers like the Ottomans, Persians, Chinese and Japanese rather than rich and easy-to-conquer foes. That they then managed to industrialize at similar rates to the West is impressive given that they started off with a poorer, less literate country. I think this shows that autocracies can develop at similar speeds to democratic countries over relatively fixed territories even in worse circumstances.
Even if Witte did get kicked out by Nicholas, surely that's a personal failure of a specific leader rather than a systemic failure. Tsar Alexander appointed him in the first place! Stolypin was appointed Prime Minister and Interior Minister by Nicholas. It seems to me that much of the damage to Russia was caused by bad luck in that they faced a stronger autocracy in Germany and a coterie of anarchists and Bolsheviks who were dead set on killing anyone who wanted to improve the country. RIP Stolypin.
No, I mentioned the book as it seems decent, but apparently is not granular enough. Your paper is a good signal for me to update.
Gregory classified Ru pattern of growth as a typical "fast start" of emerging economies, mostly extensive. And this makes sense because, as you noted, Ru didn't have much fertile soil beyond Black Earth Region, access to maritime trade beyond Baltic; but a vast space in the East to colonize, reaping low hanging fruits. China wasn't powerful at the moment, being abused by Europeans and Japanese alike. But the article clearly shows intensive growth, that's important.
Russia is a good instance of autocracy treatment group, in a natural experiment of European powers. Causality is elusive, though, as ever. Was Russia (and Japan) successful due to autocrats yielding to liberal reforms, import of European institutions and technologies; or due to restraining them? Public opinion blamed failures on entrenchment of conservative elites, backed by the tzar. But opinion is usually biased against status-quo, and the state still was a major investor in industry and education.
Speaking of counter(factuals), if an autocrat could be pressured by the public into popular reforms (like Alexander II or Nicholas II), like parliamentary Britain or France were pressured by strikes into welfare programs, what is so special about autocracy? On the other hand, if the same nominal autocracy gives raise to Stalin's industrialization, Brezhnevian stagnation and Chinese rapid growth, doesn't it imply that economic policy might be more predictive of performance, than power vertical?
Good thread. RIP Stolypin.
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