On Dictatorship, Economic Development and Stability

political science retains this dichotomy and endorses the norm inherent in the use of
Kelsen’s criterion. Supported by overwhelming empirical evidence, past and present,
dictatorship has become a byword for any regime violating freedom and other basic human
rights. Hence, its universal dislike.

However, its persistence through history and the defense of some forms of non-democratic
regimes by philosophers from Antiquity to the nineteenth century are puzzling. Plato
and Aristotle classified political regimes according to the number of rulers, namely one, a
few or many. For each type of this tripartite division, they established good and corrupt
political regimes depending on whether government is in the common interest or self-
interested. Their classifications suggest a large variety of government forms and an issue
of stability of the good ones. Nevertheless, the good and the bad types ultimately depend
on the classification criteria, often, reflecting the perspective either from the individual
or from the society. For instance, Bobbio (1989) argues that, starting with the same
conceptions about the state of nature and power, Hobbes favors monarchy while Spinoza
leans towards democracy. The former considered peace and order as the supreme objective
while the latter focused on liberty. The dispute between Hobbes and Spinoza pleads for
a multi-dimensional analysis of political regimes.

During these centuries of philosophical debate, the arguments were limited to the political
domain and no mention was made about any economic dimension. This is hardly surpris-
ing as income growth per capita was then at best of imperceptible magnitude. From the
industrial revolution on, the living standards of ordinary people growing at an unprece-
dent rate in some countries and the large income disparities that followed between them

<<   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   >>

More intriguing information