Join the editors for the first episode of our newest series, on dictatorship, democracy, and development! As an introduction, we discuss political scientist Mancur Olson's paper of the same name. Americans are increasingly wondering just how democratic their country is, and whether dictatorship might be a better fit.

Next week, we'll be looking more closely at the case of dictatorship in Portugal, so stay tuned for some interesting history and political analysis!

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Further Reading

• "Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development," by Mancur Olson, in The American Political Science Review.
• "Democratic Theory: What You Need to Know," by Spectacles.

Table of Contents

00:00 - Intro & Housekeeping

00:33 - The Italian Village Monarchist

01:13 - Today's topic

04:07 - Upcoming episodes in series

05:00 - Why dictatorship?

14:54 - Does dictatorship actually "work"?

18:17 - How does dictatorship fall short?

24:50 - How does democracy fix these problems?

28:08 - Some problems with Olson's argument

32:28 - A recap of findings

34:39 - Signing off