First off, remove democracy from your lexicon. It’s too complicated and confusing word, it means different things to different people. Usually if you bring democracy into this debate you get a circular answer by accidentally assuming many institutions at once.
A good starting question here is to think about the service recipients.
What is the theory of change for how they compel the state to provide services under each system? What assumptions are needed for it to work?
Citizens have to coordinate to punish a leader that does not provide services if they want more services than the leader prefers to provide. So steps are:
Citizens must want services.
Citizens must find out if services are provided and if better provision is possible.
Citizens they must communicate to eachother both the information and their awareness.
Citizens they must coordinate to punish simultaneously because individually attack leaders is ineffective and punishable.
If they want to prevent leaders from counter punishing (repression), citizens must punish repression (see above steps).
Citizens must choose public goods over selling their votes.
Elections make the later steps easier by coordinating simultaneous punishments (election day). Experienced oppositions make 2 and 3 easier. If 1 or 6 are violated, you won’t get any benefit though. Also if the middle class solves this and the poor do not, guess who gets service...
The short answer is that many countries democratize but see little benefit for public service because this is a really long chain that can break down easily.
I may come back and find the studies for this stuff.
These are all good points and I think there is substantial evidence to support the majority of them. Quick tangent: I’m not so sure about your dismissal of the link between voters selling votes and a lack of service provision as there are several places in which selling votes often occurs as an inadequate form of exchange and/or a way of reallocating finances to allow for the purchase of goods.
Regardless of that minor detail, I’m more or less in agreement with this framework. It gets a bit more complicated when you introduce alternative systems of collective action and coordination in non-democracies, particularly as many contemporary autocracies have become more adept at using technology to both restrict voice through both repression and targeted goods provisions.
As you note in your later comment on Vietnam below this reflects the wide array of non-democracies and the relative permanence of current regimes/systems. If you do write a blog post I’d be curious to know from an EA perspective (and your perspective) what countries/systems could see the largest gains in quality of life/life years added by inducing transitions to more inclusive forms of governance. Do these match with the countries/systems most susceptible to transitions?
First off, remove democracy from your lexicon. It’s too complicated and confusing word, it means different things to different people. Usually if you bring democracy into this debate you get a circular answer by accidentally assuming many institutions at once.
A good starting question here is to think about the service recipients. What is the theory of change for how they compel the state to provide services under each system? What assumptions are needed for it to work?
Citizens have to coordinate to punish a leader that does not provide services if they want more services than the leader prefers to provide. So steps are:
Citizens must want services.
Citizens must find out if services are provided and if better provision is possible.
Citizens they must communicate to eachother both the information and their awareness.
Citizens they must coordinate to punish simultaneously because individually attack leaders is ineffective and punishable.
If they want to prevent leaders from counter punishing (repression), citizens must punish repression (see above steps).
Citizens must choose public goods over selling their votes.
Elections make the later steps easier by coordinating simultaneous punishments (election day). Experienced oppositions make 2 and 3 easier. If 1 or 6 are violated, you won’t get any benefit though. Also if the middle class solves this and the poor do not, guess who gets service...
The short answer is that many countries democratize but see little benefit for public service because this is a really long chain that can break down easily.
I may come back and find the studies for this stuff.
These are all good points and I think there is substantial evidence to support the majority of them. Quick tangent: I’m not so sure about your dismissal of the link between voters selling votes and a lack of service provision as there are several places in which selling votes often occurs as an inadequate form of exchange and/or a way of reallocating finances to allow for the purchase of goods.
Regardless of that minor detail, I’m more or less in agreement with this framework. It gets a bit more complicated when you introduce alternative systems of collective action and coordination in non-democracies, particularly as many contemporary autocracies have become more adept at using technology to both restrict voice through both repression and targeted goods provisions.
As you note in your later comment on Vietnam below this reflects the wide array of non-democracies and the relative permanence of current regimes/systems. If you do write a blog post I’d be curious to know from an EA perspective (and your perspective) what countries/systems could see the largest gains in quality of life/life years added by inducing transitions to more inclusive forms of governance. Do these match with the countries/systems most susceptible to transitions?