Disorder, Dictatorship, and Government Effectiveness : Cross-national Evidence

Institutional design balances the costs and benefits of dictatorship and disorder. Democracy can be efficient if it improves the performance of government. Yet, sometimes authoritarian governments can be efficient if they reduce disorder. We show that democratization has a nonlinear effect on income-adjusted perceptions of government effectiveness. These findings present a new opportunity to revisit the study of government performance for researchers working public administration, political science, and economics