ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the persistent claim that democracies are inefficient, unstable, and incapable of delivering prosperity compared to authoritarian regimes. Revisiting classical and contemporary critiques, the authors argue that empirical evidence does not support the notion of the superiority of dictatorship. While democratic transitions often generate unrealistic expectations, democracies perform at least as well as autocracies on key outcomes such as economic growth, stability, public health, and environmental protection. The chapter exposes the problems of autocratic ‘success stories’, including selective time horizons and misleading comparisons, with particular attention to China. It also challenges the idea of an inevitable trade-off between freedom and prosperity. Democratic institutions, it is argued, are slower and messier by design—this enables learning, accountability, and correction of policy failures over time. The chapter concludes that democracy’s perceived inefficiency reflects inflated expectations rather than structural weaknesses.
