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| Segun Showunnmi |
The Convener of The Alternative, Otunba Segun Showunmi, has said that authoritarian nations are developing faster than democracies, arguing that concentrated authority, when competently applied, delivers results with a speed and precision that liberal systems often fail to achieve.
In an article titled ’Can Authoritarianism Build Faster’, Showunmi examined what he called the “efficiency paradox” — the ability of non-democratic systems to achieve large-scale development despite global preference for democracy.
He questioned why centralised states such as China, Singapore, and South Korea during their developmental years could mobilise resources, plan long-term, and implement large projects effectively, while many democratic governments remained trapped in cycles of debate and delay.
“The question is not moral but empirical. Concentrated authority, when competent and strategically deployed, has proven capable of generating growth at a speed liberal democracies can rarely match,” be said.
He noted that China’s rapid economic transformation, which lifted over 800 million people out of poverty within four decades, demonstrates the potential of a coordinated governance model. He compared this with the gridlock and short-termism that often characterise democratic institutions.
“Democracies today are louder but less effective. They produce elections, but not direction; expression, but not execution,” he argued.
Showunmi, a public affairs commentator said liberal democracies are suffering from “institutional fatigue”, warning that unless they evolve to deliver tangible prosperity, they risk losing legitimacy.
“Liberal democracies face a reckoning. Their ideals remain noble, but their institutions increasingly appear unfit for the speed and scale of modern challenges.”
According to him, the world must begin to assess governments not by ideology but by performance, by their ability to improve lives, reduce poverty, and expand opportunity.
“Political systems must be judged by outcomes, by their ability to deliver stability, competence, and prosperity at scale,” he wrote.
He argued that while democracies are built on freedom and deliberation, they have become bogged down by populism, short electoral cycles, and media-driven policymaking that favour temporary applause over strategic results.
“Governance cannot afford permanent debate,” he warned.
Showunmi drew parallels from history, noting that no nation industrialised through procedural democracy alone.
Britain’s industrialisation, he recalled, was powered by enclosure acts, forced labour and colonial exploitation, while the United States rose through monopolistic excesses during the Gilded Age.
He added that South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, all of which are now celebrated as democratic success stories, were authoritarian during their formative decades.
“In every case, prosperity preceded political liberalisation. Democracy was the outcome of development, not its engine,” he noted.
He further accused Western analysts of hypocrisy for celebrating their own histories of coercive industrialisation while condemning the centralised efficiency of Asian models.
“When China lifts 800 million people from poverty, we call it authoritarianism. But when the British Empire industrialised through famine, forced labour, and colonial extraction, we called it progress. The double standard is revealing,” he noted.
According to him, the 21st century belongs to states that can combine the discipline of authority with the legitimacy of participation — countries that blend democratic consent with technocratic competence.
“The twenty-first century may therefore belong to states that combine disciplined governance with selective participation — systems that prize expertise and continuity as much as they do consent,” he stated.
Showunmi clarified that his position was not an endorsement of authoritarianism but a call for democracy to evolve into a more decisive, performance-oriented model.
“These are not rejections of democracy, but recalibrations of it. If democracies cannot deliver tangible prosperity, they risk ceding both moral and practical ground to systems they have long dismissed as inferior,” he warned.
He concluded that while democracy remains a noble aspiration, it must prove its worth in the modern age by combining freedom with efficiency and direction with delivery.
“The pursuit of freedom and the pursuit of progress are not always synchronised. The challenge before the global order is to reconcile them before the credibility of democracy itself becomes a casualty of its inefficiency,” he wrote.