Without accountability a government has neither the information nor the reason to serve the population

The argument

Opponents of the authoritarian case argue that development is an information problem before it is a planning problem. A government needs to know where the shortages are, which projects are failing, which officials are stealing and what the population actually needs, and in an open system this information arrives through elections, a free press, independent courts, published statistics and organisations that can complain without risk. Where criticism is punished, opponents argue, each of these channels is closed or corrupted: officials report success because reporting failure is dangerous, statistics are managed, and the ruler is the last person in the country to learn that a programme is not working. The second half of the argument concerns incentive. A government that cannot be removed does not need the population's welfare in order to stay in office; it needs the loyalty of the army, the security services and whichever elite controls the revenue. Opponents argue that spending follows that requirement, which is why unaccountable states characteristically over-invest in the capital, the armed forces and prestige construction while under-investing in the clinics, schools, rural roads and water supply on which broad development depends. Taken together, opponents argue, the two failures compound. Bad information prevents the correction of mistakes, and misaligned incentive means there is no pressure to correct them. On this account the apparent advantage of decisiveness is illusory, because a government able to act quickly without being told it is wrong will pursue a mistaken policy further and at greater cost than a slower system that is forced to hear objections.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Proponents of the authoritarian case reply that information can be obtained without elections, through internal audit, inspection, pilot programmes, competition between provincial administrations and performance assessment of officials, and that some unaccountable states have built capable statistical and planning systems. They add that electoral accountability transmits information selectively too, favouring organised and concentrated interests over diffuse ones, and that the argument from incentive does not explain the cases in which such regimes have delivered sustained improvement in living standards.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The channels named are the ones an open system uses, and the premise treats them as the only ones available. Internal audit, inspection, pilot schemes and competition between provincial administrations also generate information, and some unaccountable states have built capable statistical systems. [Rejecting P3] That spending follows the loyalty of armies and elites is a strong generalisation given without the qualification that elite interests sometimes coincide with growth, as where a ruler's revenue depends on a productive economy rather than on extraction. [Rejecting C] The conclusion is that such government is not effective at development, where the premises establish that it is prone to particular failures. The cases in which sustained improvement nonetheless occurred are not addressed, and a claim about a tendency does not settle a claim about what is possible.