A government that need not bargain can impose the rules a market requires

The argument

A second argument concerns the state's capacity to act against powerful interests. Development depends on institutions that constrain the already strong: collecting tax from the wealthy, dismantling monopolies, breaking up concentrated landholding, forcing incumbent firms to compete, and dismissing officials who extract rents. Proponents argue that in an electoral system those same interests are the principal funders of campaigns, the owners of media and the organisers of opposition, so a government that depends on their support cannot easily be the instrument of their constraint. Proponents argue that a government independent of them can be. Where power does not rest on money raised from incumbents or on coalitions they can veto, a ruler who judges that growth requires breaking a monopoly or expropriating an unproductive estate is able to do it, and the affected parties have no electoral route to prevent it. On this account authoritarian insulation, usually described as a defect, is the condition that makes the hardest reforms available. The argument extends to administration. Proponents hold that a bureaucracy appointed on merit and driven hard from the top can be shielded from the patronage pressures that constituency politics generates, where an elected politician must place supporters, direct projects to particular districts and protect local employers. The result claimed is a state that can plan, tax and discipline, which proponents take to be the practical difference between countries that develop quickly and countries that do not.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Opponents reply that the premises describe a ruler with no interests of their own, whereas unaccountable governments characteristically fuse political and economic power rather than separating them, so monopolies are transferred to the ruler's family and allies instead of being dismantled. They add that insulation from organised interests is also insulation from the information those interests carry, and that without elections, press freedom or independent courts there is no mechanism to detect that a reform is failing or that officials are extracting rents from it.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The institutions listed are indeed what development requires, and the premise assumes a ruler who wants them. Nothing in unaccountability supplies that motive, and the same freedom from constraint permits a ruler to do the opposite. [Rejecting P2] That incumbents fund campaigns and organise opposition describes a real vulnerability of electoral systems rather than an advantage of the alternative. Where power is unaccountable the same interests buy the ruler directly, at lower cost and with no disclosure. [Rejecting P3] The absence of an electoral route for affected parties is offered as the advantage, and it is equally the defect, since no route exists for anyone else either, including those harmed by a reform that is failing. The premise counts the silencing of opponents without counting the silencing of everybody.