> Poverty might be related to authoritarian, but not necessarily caused by it. There are some good arguments for why it might be the cause of it. A book I real

> Poverty might be related to authoritarian, but not necessarily caused by it. There are some good arguments for why it might be the cause of it. A book I really enjoyed on this subject is called "The Dictator's Handbook". One of the arguments in the book is that in dictatorships, the rulers have much less need to please ordinary people, and they are better off utilizing their available resources to enrich themselves and buy loyalty from other powerful players. If they are not able to gain loyalty from other powerful players they risk a coup. Where as in democratic societies, the leaders need to please the people, otherwise they risk losing power by being voted out. A reasonable explanation for the few authoritarian counties that do not have poor and struggling populations is that they have an outside player that is threatening them. In these cases, they have demands for something more than what they can bully out of their populations. So you are going to see widespread education, and ideally, prosperity. This gives them advanced military technology and economic power. I am likely doing the book injustice in my representation of it, but it is able to provide a very solid argument for the above being true. Both from an analytical perspective, as well as a historical one.