POLSCI 1G06 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Liberal Democracy, Authoritarianism, Economic Liberalism
4 Jun 2014
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Political science 1g06 2013 lecture 11a non-democratic political systems. In their 2012 analysis, freedom house classified 117 of 195 countries as electoral democracies. Meaning that 40% of the total are not democratic. So, if we only focus on liberal democracies: we are missing out on a very large piece of the world"s political puzzle. We avoid asking a number of political questions. Note: in exploring the justifications for authoritarianism i am not attempting to justify these justifications. Rather, there are two purposes i am aiming at: Non-liberal-democratic states often justify themselves as being more democratic than liberal democracy. Liberal democracies at least two things are present. Non-liberal-democratic political systems where both of the above factors are not present. For reasons of simplicity we will call these political systems authoritarian (although there are different types of non-democracies) For many liberal economists: wealth and the distribution of wealth are the key factors explaining the existence of authoritarian political systems.
