RenCap Sees 14% Chance of Regime Change in Developing Countries
- Thailand, Egypt among most likely to undergo regime changes
- Likelihood of shift to democratic rule increases with GDP
The biggest political risks to the global economy may be stemming from developed markets, but Renaissance Capital sees no reason to anticipate dramatic changes. Advanced economies are simply too wealthy, it says.
The risk of regime change lies with autocratic governments in developing nations, not rich democracies. They have a 14 percent chance in any given year of regime change, or shifting to more democratic forms of rule, London-based economists Charles Robertson and Vikram Lopez wrote in a report released Tuesday. With the exception of Singapore and oil exporters, all autocratic nations become more democratic as they get richer because they would otherwise stagnate politically and economically, they wrote, citing their study of national-accounts data, per-capita gross domestic product, and two centuries’ worth of political scores measuring government authority.