ABSTRACT
Many major differences regarding the survival and performance of political regimes are largely due to different fates of the middle classes in different regions of the world. Dictatorships in poor countries with an emerging economy and a rising middle class survive, as in China. Democracies in poor countries with an emerging economy and a rising middle class also survive and even thrive, as in India or Indonesia. Democracies in rich countries also survive, but some of them languish and deteriorate along with their middle classes, as in parts of the United States and Europe. Meanwhile, democracy at the global level does not make much progress because, among other factors, “a truly global middle class is still more promise than reality.”
