Video: Problem solvers caucus

Americans tend to treat democracy’s superiority as settled, and the long-run evidence backs them up. A major study by MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and colleagues found that countries that democratize end up about 20 percent richer per person within a generation. But most of the world does not grade governments on long-run studies. For billions of people outside the wealthy West, the test is simpler: does the power stay on, are food prices steady, is there work, and do the roads get built? When the stomach is empty, a ballot can feel like a luxury.

China understands this and sells its model on exactly those terms. Its GDP per capita has climbed from about $300 in 1980 to nearly $15,000 today, by IMF figures, and the World Bank credits it with lifting some 800 million people out of extreme poverty. India, the world’s largest democracy, started from a similar place and sits near $2,800. Beijing’s centralized system, paired with Deng Xiaoping’s market reforms, built power plants, factories and rail lines at a pace India’s more deliberative politics has not matched. Anyone who values liberty will find little to admire in that model. It does explain why the model sells.