On Dictatorship, Economic Development and Stability

empirical evidence. Social order has been a perpetual preoccupation of political thinkers
and one of the central problems of political philosophy. Before any form of government,
there are two ways to settle arrangements among individuals whenever they interact:
peacefully or conflictingly. Even though the end-goal of most people is to live in peace,
conflict is a means that cannot be ruled out to achieve it. Considering these two possibil-
ities for human behavior leads to Thomas Hobbes’ state of nature. Hobbes in Leviathan
(1651) thought that the human search to secure ’felicity’ through power, the possibility
that any human being had the capacity of killing any other, and the scarcity of goods
would bring all at war with all. In fact, even the abundance of goods can lead to war. If
a good is excludable (such as a primary resource for example), a finite large amount of it
does not necessarily imply peace. The power that the monopoly of such a good can give
to the holder is sufficient to drive everyone into a fight to control the production of this
good, either to prevent others from establishing a disproportionate power or to acquire it
oneself. Whenever individuals interact, power becomes an issue. In the state of nature
there is no guarantee that individuals will refrain voluntarily accumulating and using it to
threaten each other, even for legitimate purposes. Thus, social order is uncertain due to
the absence of any concentration of force and of any political specialization together. This
is precisely the characterization of anarchy (Taylor 1982). In this situation, everyone has
to face alone all the potential threats with uncertain results. This prospect is fearsome
for most people. That is the reason why social order is generally found desirable and
anarchy disliked. Nonetheless, the problem remains to find a mechanism performing the
maintenance of social order. Such a mechanism is generally called an institution and so-

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