DP19146 Authoritarian Institutions
Political institutions of authoritarianism are designed to ensure the elite's lasting hold of power. They might be growth-enhancing at certain stages of a country's development and become a major obstacle to economic progress in other stages, but their primary role is to keep the elite unaccountable. Thirty years ago, the economic collapse of the USSR-led communist system gave a hope for the ``end of history'', the convergence of all political systems to a democracy. Since then, the share of non-democracies has stabilized after a dramatic fall; their share of the world's GDP has been increasing, largely due to China's enormous contribution. In this essay, we focus on institutional connections between the monopoly on political power and the monopolistic, centralized organization of economic life under authoritarianism.
