Benevolent Autocracies: Challeneges and Limitations

Benevolent Autocracies: Challeneges and Limitations 

Regimes that can be classified more or less as autocracies would have an entirely different governing principle within the 'Winning coalition' and the 'Selectorate' wherein the former is a smaller subset of the latter and the latter is the portion of the population that gets to choose a country's governing coalition.

Non-democratic governments around the globe would more often present themselves as democracies and for the most part fulfill ‘democratic conditions’ such as; some form of voting in an election, offices and positions within the government open to the public and some form of insurance that some forms of freedom would be provided to the people. Classifying which countries are democracies and which countries are not can lead to some complications. In a number of times there has been global skepticism with democracy and where it is headed. The main difference between authoritarian and democratic regimes being that autocracies would have a much smaller 'winning coalition' compared to democracies, if not the longevity is longer and the pool from with which the governing coalition comes from is smaller.

There are a number of studies and research that aims to classify measurements of democracies around the globe in contrast with the autocratic/dictatorial regimes, one of them would be the “Democracy Index” put together by the Economist Intelligence Unit based in London. Measurements such as the Democracy Index and the “Quality of Life Index” calculated by the same group illustrates the gap and at an increasing rate of disparity of freedoms between democracies and non-democracies. Chief among them would be political freedom; this type of freedom is the most disproportionate in terms of accessibility and inclusiveness. Countries classified as top tier democracies such as Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and New Zealand would have greatest freedom among other areas such as education, health, press and economic freedom while countries in the bottom tier of the democracy list with the least amount of political freedom showed substantial correlation with those other areas of freedom. Countries on the bottom of the list would include China, Russia and Vietnam.

Exceptions to the parallel relationship between democracy and freedom do exist in some cases as in countries like Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Arab and Gulf States provide more freedom in some areas than some democracies do. All the aforementioned societies can be classified as autocratic or at the least non-democratic. In the case of Cuba where there is universal healthcare access. In the cases of the oil-rich Arab states, enough freedom is provided in terms of movement, economic freedom and in most cases education as well. It is important to note however that these exceptions are affected profoundly by unique circumstances such as huge financial resources or in Cuba’s case an authoritarian regime that has put in place socialist policies that have run without interruption for decades. The shared characteristic between these governments asides from being non-democracies is the greater freedom they provide to their population albeit limited and despite them being non-democratic

What we classify as freedom. Our freedom and what we think about it as a concept would prove that democracies are indeed freer than autocracies. The concepts of a free press, voting, freedom of movement are all indicative of freedom in democratic societies. These aspects of society would not be readily accessible to most people living in non-democratic countries. Freedom, or the concept of it would always present democracies with a greater claim of representing the people's interests over autocracies, unless the regime in a given non-democratic state has a track record that proves otherwise.

Socio-economic and socio-political positions of people within a society greatly affects their freedom. That freedom in turn can translate into happiness and the society's perception of the ruling coalition.
In a democratic society inequality would always exist. Democratic principles as in most cases go hand in hand with liberalism and/or capitalism. Financial means has a profound effect on one’s freedom and that in effect can lead to greater inequality and unequal access to freedom. That is not to say that in non-democracies, inequality does not exist. A commonality between democratic and autocratic states would be inequality itself. Social Justice is the key concept to counter inequality and promote equal access to freedom. Education, healthcare, social welfare, community uplifting programs are all examples of these.

Social justice and to a lesser extent redistribution of resources. This trait within a society would be more commonly found in democracies. Money and the concept of some people having more freedom than others within society has been a recurring conflict that is part of democracy that societies have had to deal with, democracies in the long run would be beneficial to human society as it is able to approach such issues in a more socially cohesive way. Autocratic/dictatorial regimes however have an advantage over democracies if they are able to and indeed pursue a path to social justice; Stability. The limitations of a democratic system with its checks, balances, term limits and public courtship; it is no small feat to achieve any a meager step towards wealth distribution, social welfare and state subsidies.

The greatest advantage of autocratic regimes with a smaller ruling coalition can possibly be its greatest disadvantage. Balancing the interests of the people within the ruling coalition and the interests of the general population is paramount to the survival of autocracies, much like in democratic societies. The main difference being that in the case of autocratic regimes there are less limitations and possible legal hurdles in its effort. By failing to equalise the relationship with the general population, the 'selectorate' these regimes would fail to achieve the main factor that would maintain their hold on power. The general socio-economic equality among Singapore's population, the relative distribution of oil wealth in Saudi Arabia, Brunei and other oil producing autocracies and China's economic miracle; all these would crumble before the winning coalition's eyes. So long as the concept of relative freedom and equality and social justice is present in society, the winning coalition autocratic or otherwise can rest assured that the government's position will be firmly in place (excluding external pressure and internal fighting within the government). This is achieved mainly through economic growth and relative government accountability with regards to the population's welfare and happiness.