Directive authoritarian rule produced exceptional growth, employment, and development in South Korea

Evidence

The ROK has been an extraordinary economic success. Its rate of _ growth in the 1980s has slowed, but at 7 or 8 per cent per year is still high; and although its international debt is now in the order of $45 billion, it is still regarded as creditworthy by the International Monetary Fund and thus by private banks. In its high rate of growth since the 1960s it has, unlike some other fast-growing countries, provided high rates of employment and considerable security of employment too, and if it has spent less on health than some other ‘developing’ countries, including the DPRK, it has effectively abolished illiteracy. It is, in short, a demonstration case of the economic benefits of directive rule. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1639

Categorization

• XREF: Contradicts the common assumption that open democracy is a precondition of economic development — relevant to reader’s Hardin/Luhmann synthesis on how social order forms without liberal institutions.