Join the editors for the first episode of our newest series, on dictatorship, democracy, and development! As an introduction, we discuss political scientist Mancur Olson's paper of the same name. Americans are increasingly wondering just how democratic their country is, and whether democracy is even worth it. We begin to dive into those questions today.
Next week, we'll be looking more closely at the case of dictatorship in Portugal, so stay tuned for some interesting history and political analysis!
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"Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development," by Mancur Olson, in The American Political Science Review.
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Table of Contents
00:00 - Intro & Housekeeping
00:33 - The Italian Village Monarchist
01:13 - Today's topic
04:07 - Upcoming episodes in series
05:00 - Why dictatorship?
14:54 - Does dictatorship actually "work"?
18:17 - How does dictatorship fall short?
24:50 - How does democracy fix these problems?
28:08 - Some problems with Olson's argument
32:28 - A recap of findings
34:39 - Signing off
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