a lot of implicit assumptions have seeped into our consciousness. The most important one (shared with many other dystopian novels) is that dictatorships are stable forms of government.
we should refrain from assuming that dictatorships, whether party or individual, are somehow the default state, and conduct a much more evidence-based analysis of the matter.
My comment is unrelated to Orwell, but it is related to the stability of real-world political regimes.
I recently read The Dictator’s Handbook, an excellent book which essentially is a popular account of the selectorate theory. Let me attempt a TL;DR, or rather a list of key points relevant to the current discussion, from memory:
Nobody rules alone. Stalins, Genghis Khans and Clintons need supporters to keep them in power.
The key imperative of a ruler is his political survival, that is, staying in power.
The ruler stays in power by rewarding his essential supporters (referred to as ‘essentials’), that is, people whose support translates into staying in power.
Regimes where the coalition of essentials is small are referred to as autocracies. Regimes with large coalitions of essentials are referred to as democracies. The authors prefer to use these two terms instead of the usual definitions such as monarchy, dictature, theocracy, kleptocracy etc.
In an autocracy, where the number of essentials is small, it’s cheaper for the ruler to purchase their support with private rewards (money, security, palaces, yachts, de-facto immunity from the law etc.)
In a democracy, where the number of essentials is large, it’s cheaper for the ruler to purchase their support via public goods (usually in the form of good governance and policies, such as healthcare, education, etc.)
Statistically, the political survival of a ruler (defined via the probability of being ousted in the next two-year period) in an autocracy is significantly higher than in a democracy. That is, an autocracy is statistically more stable than a democracy.
Purchasing a foreign policy concession (demanded as a public-good reward by the coalition of essentials of the democratic ruler) from an autocracy is cheaper than purchasing it from a democracy. This is an external factor that pushes regimes towards autocracies and away from democracies.
Successful revolutions in autocracies occur when the ruler cannot reliably provide his essentials with private rewards, or won’t be able to do so in the near future. When the essentials understand that their flow of private rewards may cease soon, they begin to shop around for other options and may "fail" to protect the ruler from a promising challenger or a revolution.
The most stable autocracies are those where the ruler doesn’t need people as a source of resources for rewarding his coalition of essentials. For example, when a ruler has oil he doesn’t need to extract taxes from the populace, which means he isn’t compelled to provide public goods and policies that increase tax income, which in turn means that he is free to suppress his people in order to minimize the chances of a successful revolution.
So, to answer the question posed in the original post, autocracies (including dictatorships) are indeed more stable than democracies, at least according to the selectorate theory.
As for the book itself, I found it excellent. Aside from being a fascinating, eye-opening read in general, its section on modern Russia is more spot-on than anything I read in our political press back when I still consumed political news -- I correctly predicted its content before reading it!
Statistically, the political survival of a ruler (defined via the probability of being ousted in the next two-year period) in an autocracy is significantly higher than in a democracy. That is, an autocracy is statistically more stable than a democracy.
The bolded part isn't using the same meaning of "stable" as most comparisons of forms of government. Most people are usually concerned with the stability of government institutions as a whole (because they provide services like public order, support the economy, etc.). So while a western-style de...
Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is brilliant, terrifying and useful. It's been at its best fighting against governmental intrusions, and is often quoted by journalists and even judges. It's cultural impact has been immense. And, hey, it's well written.
But that doesn't mean it's accurate as a source of predictions or counterfactuals. Orwell's belief that "British democracy as it existed before 1939 would not survive the war" was wrong. Nineteen Eighty-Four did not predict the future course of communism. There is no evidence that anything like the world he envisaged could (or will) happen. Which isn't the same as saying that it couldn't, but we do require some evidence before accepting Orwell's world as realistic.
Yet from this book, a lot of implicit assumptions have seeped into our consciousness. The most important one (shared with many other dystopian novels) is that dictatorships are stable forms of government. Note the "forever" in the quote above - the society Orwell warned about would never change, never improve, never transform. In several conversations (about future governments, for instance), I've heard - and made - the argument that a dictatorship was inevitable, because it's an absorbing state. Democracies can come become dictatorships, but dictatorships (barring revolutions) will endure for good. And so the idea is that if revolutions become impossible (because of ubiquitous surveillance, for instance), then we're stuck with Big Brother for life, and for our children's children'c children's lives.
But thinking about this in the context of history, this doesn't seem credible. The most stable forms of government are democracies and monarchies; nothing else endures that long. And laying revolutions aside, there have been plenty of examples of even quite nasty governments improving themselves. Robespierre was deposed from within his own government - and so the Terror, for all its bloodshed, didn't even last a full year. The worse excesses of Stalinism ended with Stalin. Gorbachev voluntarily opened up his regime (to a certain extent). Mao would excoriate the China of today. Britain's leaders in the 19th and 20th century gradually opened up the franchise, without ever coming close to being deposed by force of arms. The dictatorships of Latin America have mostly fallen to democracies (though revolutions played a larger role there). Looking over the course of recent history, I see very little evidence the dictatorships have much lasting power at all - or that they are incapable of drastic internal change and even improvements.
Now, caveats abound. The future won't be like the past - maybe an Orwellian dictatorship will become possible with advanced surveillance technologies. Maybe a world government won't see any neighbouring government doing a better job, and feel compelled to match it by improving lot of its citizens. Maybe the threat of revolution remains necessary, even if revolts don't actually happen.
Still, we should refrain from assuming that dictatorships, whether party or individual, are somehow the default state, and conduct a much more evidence-based analysis of the matter.