Reviewing 40 years of hard, empirical data, from China and India to Chile and Iraq, the authors show that poor democracies beat poor autocracies in every economic measure. In addition, the authors offer dramatic evidence that democracies are less likely to fight each other and that terrorists more often find safe haven in authoritarian countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.
Morton H. Halperin is a Senior Advisor to the Open Society Institute and the Open Society Policy Center. Dr. Halperin served in the Clinton, Nixon and Johnson administrations, most recently as Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State (1998-2001). He taught at Harvard (1960-66) and, as a visitor at other universities including Columbia, George Washington, and Yale. He has been affiliated with a number of other think tanks including the Center for American Progress, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Century Foundation and the Brookings Institution. He is the author of numerous books and articles including Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, The Democracy Advantage, and Protecting Democracy.
