Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development

Citation: Mancur Olson (1993) Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development. The American Political Science Review (RSS)
DOI (original publisher): 10.2307/2938736
Semantic Scholar (metadata): 10.2307/2938736
Sci-Hub (fulltext): 10.2307/2938736
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development
Wikidata (metadata): Q20640555
Download: http://www.svt.ntnu.no/iss/Indra.de.Soysa/POL3503H05/olson.pdf
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Summary

Hunter-gatherer bands were small enough to undertake collective action by consensus. In case they got too large or experienced internal conflict, a group could split off. Little incentive to enslave other bands as productivity too low to bear costs of subjugating and guarding. Agriculture changed all these variables. Unsurprisingly then despite talk of "social contract" no large societies have obtained peace through agreement by individuals.

Large populations have avoided violent anarchy in which roving bandits have incentive to steal everything at hand through subjugation by stationary bandits (autocrats) who have incentive to take only a portion of much larger wealth obtained by production in peaceful conditions.

Quote:

"History until relatively recent times has been mostly a story of the gradual progress of civilization under stationary bandits interrupted by occasional episodes of roving banditry. From about the time that Sargon's conquests created the empire of Akkad until, say, the time of Louis XVI and Voltaire, there was an impressive development of civilization that occurred in large part under stationary banditry."

The portion taken by a stationary bandit will be very large though, and the revenue-maximizing take increases as time horizon shortens. Autocrats may often have short time horizons due to survival threats such as war and succession crises.

In a democracy the ruling majority obtains revenue not only from transfers to itself (like the autocrat) but also from the market, so it will choose lower extraction rates. However, the narrower the interests controlling a democracy, the more they will be concerned with transfers to themselves. Democratic leaders can have even shorter time horizons than autocrats, but are less subject to short term survival threats due to succession with internal legitimacy and greater chance of winning wars (citation claims democracies win 2x rate of autocracies).

Usually one autocrat is replaced by another. Democracy can emerge if it is impossible for any one group to take all power over a large enough area to be viable due to dispersion of resources and power and other historical conditions.

In autocracy progress is achieved through the encompassing interest of the autocrat, which is never stable over the long term. The moral advantages of democracy are widely understood, but the economic advantages and challenges scarcely so.