Democracy has long been outperforming non-democracies in both social and economic terms. The rapid economic growth that a number of economies under authoritarian regimes have shown in recent years can be explained mainly by the industrialization process that was possible due to Western investments and technologies. Once most of those technologies are successfully applied, such economies are bound to stagnate and begin to lag behind their democratic counterparts, which will reveal multiple social issues that have long been masked by the soaring GDP figures. Hunt and Colander (2016) argue that modern democracies were established to reflect Western cultural values. Therefore, such democracies currently cannot be established in all countries worldwide. Nevertheless, it does not mean that nations should give up their efforts to encourage freedom and respect for the individual personality.
References
Hunt, E. & Colander, D. (2016). Social science: An introduction to the study of society (15th ed.). Routledge.