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gwern's avatar

Yes, this is a problem for the claim. One of the findings, IIRC, is that the wealthier a nation is (per capita), the less likely any transition from authoritarianism to democracy will ever be reversed. So even if we assume the risk of democratization is exogenous and unvarying, the mix of countries will be continually shifting towards democracy.

(South Korea comes to mind. Strong military dictatorship which, during the break-neck growth, tipped into a real democracy, and there is no domestic sign it will ever reverse (short of, I dunno, North Korea conquering it).)

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

But this is a fantastically stupid post though isn't it? Your 'high variance mystery factor X' which some nations have and others don't is just something you've made up - it has no grounding in reality.

You seem to model the 'dictatorship or democracy' variable and the 'economic growth rate' variable, for each nation, as stationary time series. As if the progress of human history had now 'settled out' into a number of equilibria - one for each nation (all evolving independently of each other, of course!) - and all we have to do to understand and prophecy our long term future is to determine the parameters of these time series.

This is *monumentally* obtuse.

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