Rule by Velvet Fist by New York Times Op Editors Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman brings up an interesting subject, Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore. Authoritarian rule goes badly when it tries to manage the market economy in the same manner it manages its politics, with an iron fist. Singapore flourished because it welcomed a free market economy and with it an eventual development into a democracy. Lee Kuan Yew was a beautiful authoritarian.
I’ll get hate mail for this but the second inline is Pinochet of Chile, a hateful political authoritarian who was advised to bring in the Chicago Boys after his coup d’etat to develop Chile’s moribund economy. The economic flourish lead to a return to a successful democracy in Chile.
There is no such a prognosis for General Sisi’s coup d’etat in Egypt because the military fosters a crony capitalist paradise of insider deal making. Its a capitalism which does nothing to generate prosperity and therefore forget about an eventual turn to democracy. Other strongmen who reject capitalism, such as Castro in Cuba and Chavez in Venezuela, reject prosperity and its democratizing influence as well.
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