On January 29, 2026, the SAIS Bologna Institute for Policy Research hosted Simon Commander, Managing Partner at Altura Partners & Independent Economics, for a discussion on "The Modern Economic Features and Consequences of Modern Authoritarianism." Moderated by Eni Professor of International Economics Michael G. Plummer, the event explored the impact that different types of authoritarian regimes have on a country's economic growth between 1970 to 2020. Commander's research reveals that autocratic regimes were marked by high private rents and low public goods, and in most cases exercised more repression relative to democracies. He also found that the economies of these regimes tend to underperform relative to democracies, with China being a notable outlier given its rise in per capital income since the 1990s.

Commander opened by defining authoritarian systems as the means their leadership employs to deny citizens the opportunity to replace them. He also emphasized that "authoritarian" is not a homogeneous category. He placed authoritarian governments in one of four categories: Personalized autocracy, dynastic autocracy, institutionalized autocracy, and electoral autocracy. Personalized autocracy was the most common and often found in lower income countries. Dynastic autocracies were defined as having a hereditary principle. Commander characterized institutionalized autocracies as being ideological and having high levels of control over citizens. Finally, electoral autocracies were defined as emerging from democratic eroding.

The three main margins in which autocratic behavior plays out, according to Commander, are public goods, private rents, and repression. Public goods include spending on health, education, and infrastructure; Private rents include resources appropriated by rulers and their supporters; Repression includes spending on security, censorship, and media control. Commander emphasized that the combos of these margins vary between all authoritarian countries relative to democracies and their exact ration depends on regime type and other factors. However, authoritarian regimes must grapple with problems of allocation, namely the balance of trade-offs between the three aforementioned margins, and distribution, or deciding who gets the goods that the government extracts.

Commander then outlined the economic architecture of authoritarian states. Based on his research, Commander characterized authoritarian autocracies as having large public sectors, state-owned enterprises, and strategic location for connected or crony companies to enable rent extraction. They also leverage a combination of market power, high levels of concentration, and non-market advantages to radically limit scope for entry; exit is also limited. Commander also acknowledged that systems of governance, democracies and autocracies alike, can change since neither autocracies nor democracies are 100% stable. However, many full governance transitions do not endure since the costs of dismantling inherited structures tend to be high and successor governments often seek to replicate the same market structure and privileges as the prior structure.

Commander closed by predicting that personalized autocracies are likely to persist, particularly in Asian and Latin American countries. He also anticipated that China will continue to manage the tensions between centralized control and decentralization, with implications for the country's future innovation and investment.

---

hosted by Professor Michael G. Plummer


Simon Commander is Managing Partner of Altura Partners providing strategic and economic policy advice to governments and companies in emerging economies.

Previously Commander was Senior Adviser at the World Bank in Washington DC (1988-1998) and then at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London (1998-2011). He has also held faculty positions at London Business School (LBS), IE Business School in Madrid, and the University of Cambridge. He holds an MA from Oxford University and a PhD from Cambridge University.

His recent publications include The Connections World: The Future of Asian Capitalism (with S. Estrin), published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. His latest book, The Economics of Modern Authoritarianism and its Curious Allure (with S. Estrin), will be published by the University of Chicago Press in 2026.