Setser has a striking series of pictures showing recent (and projected) changes in geopolitical power. These illustrate an increasing amount of the world’s wealth and productive capacity shifting away from democratic countries, and towards autocratic ones, buoyed largely by China.

The forecasts are constructed by taking “baseline growth and then apply the largest and smallest growth differential, based on 7 year periods starting in 1993 through 2008, to the autocratic record.”

Constructing the high and low limits from ‘93-’08 is certain to get this sort of result: no major political change (of the sort referenced earlier in the chart) took place during this period. The autocratic record (at least, China) is also unusually good for that very period. Extend China’s data back to 1970, and this chart would show a very different result.

Nevertheless, democracy has been a historical aberration in the human experience (something like 5% of people ever born have lived in a democracy, the rest in some crude form of autocracy?) Whether these sorts of political systems can continue to survive is also an important question. So far the record has been good, but it’s entirely possible that we screw it up.

There’s also the notion that modern autocracies are somewhat more benign than their historical counterparts – the binary measure of ‘autocracy’ / ‘democracy’ does not accurately describe increases in social and economic freedom within authoritarian countries.