A blog for POLS 209, Dictatorships and Revolutions, at Victoria University of Wellington. A place for students to talk and think about political pathologies all over the world. This is our other blog - see also here
That is a very useful way of looking at data and making comparisons between certain states. I'm sure there are hundreds of interesting things to say, but I just want to highlight one particular thing.
ALL of the modern wealthy non-democratic states are major oil producers: Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia. This is interesting, as it means that the governments of these states might not neccesarily have anything to do with the economic growth they have experienced, and have simply been fortunate enough to have large oil reserves. If one removes them from the graph, the curve tending towards democratic regimes being more economically developed becomes much clearer. After taking this into account, Singapore becomes the only real wealthy non-democratic state.
That is a very useful way of looking at data and making comparisons between certain states. I'm sure there are hundreds of interesting things to say, but I just want to highlight one particular thing.
ReplyDeleteALL of the modern wealthy non-democratic states are major oil producers: Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia. This is interesting, as it means that the governments of these states might not neccesarily have anything to do with the economic growth they have experienced, and have simply been fortunate enough to have large oil reserves. If one removes them from the graph, the curve tending towards democratic regimes being more economically developed becomes much clearer. After taking this into account, Singapore becomes the only real wealthy non-democratic state.