Learning to Live With DespotsMarch/April 2020 53
who saw aligning with Washington as
the best o di¾cult choices. General
Douglas MacArthur allied with the
emperor o Japan rather than trying him
as a war criminal. Hirohito was no
democrat. But the alternative, a commu-
nist system, was even worse.
There is no teleological trajectory, no
natural and inevitable path from extrac-
tive, closed states to inclusive, open
states. Sustained economic growth and
consolidated democracy have eluded
most societies. Progress requires aligning
the incentives o repressive elites with
those o the repressed masses. This has
happened rarely and has depended on
many factors that cannot be controlled
by outside powers.GOOD ENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT
WORK
The United States can still exert inu-
ence on the rest o the world, but it
must carefully tailor its strategy to ¥t
the circumstances. There are three main
kinds o countries: wealthy, consoli-
dated democracies, countries that are
transitional (with a mix o democratic
and nondemocratic features), and
despotic regimes.
O the world’s wealthy countries,
de¥ned as having a per capita annual
income greater than $17,000, around 30
are consolidated democracies according
to the measures used by the Center for
Systemic Peace’s Polity Project, which
rates the democratic quality o countries
on a scale o negative ten to ten. All the
consolidated democracies (with the
exception o Australia and New Zea-
land) are in East Asia, Europe, or
North America. The United States can
best help these countries by working to
perfect its own democracy, as well ashas been achieved by only a few polities.
As James Madison wrote in The Federalist
Papers, no. 51, “In framing a govern-
ment which is to be administered by
men over men, the great di¾culty lies in
this: you must ¥rst enable the govern-
ment to control the governed; and in
the next place oblige it to control itself.”
No wiser words on government have
ever been written.
Rational choice institutionalism
makes it clear that wealth and democracy
are not the natural order o things.
More wealth and a large middle class may
make democracy more likely, but they
do not guarantee it. Luck matters, too.
I the wind had blown in a dierent
direction in June 1588, the Spanish
Armada might have been able to support
the Duke o¤ Parma’s invasion o¤ Eng-
land. Queen Elizabeth I would probably
have been deposed. Great Britain might
never have become the birthplace o the
Industrial Revolution or the cradle o
liberty. Likewise, in 1940, i the waters
o the English Channel had prevented
the small boats from rescuing the British
Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk,
the British government might have
sought peace, and Nazi Germany might
have been able to devote all its resources
to the defeat o the Soviet Union. The
outcome o World War II might have
been very dierent.
Pointing out that outside actors
cannot usually create democracy, eec-
tive government, and a free-market
economy hardly amounts to a revelation.
The successes in West Germany, Italy,
and Japan after World War II were
aberrations made possible by the power
o the United States, the delegitimiza-
tion o¤ fascist governments, and the
existence o local members o the elite