... he draws in the definitions of liberal and illiberal democracies and the fact that illiberal democracies are on the rise, there are several flaws in Zakaria's argument. Zakaria greatly underestimates the highly negative impact of authoritarianism. In their rebuttal of Zakaria's theory, John Shattuck and Brian Atwood, cite many examples of high costs of authoritarianism such as "skyrocketing poverty under Burma's military junta" and economic decline and egregious maldistributions of wealth under autocratic leaders such as Ferdinand Marcos and Mobutu Sese Seko. The authors insist that "while better than these regimes, Zakaria's liberal autocrats look liberal only in comparison with the totalitarian rulers that preceded them." The abuse of human rights and repression of political choice make these autocracies poor alternatives to governments committed to democratization. Of course, emerging democracies are far from perfect, but as messy and complex as the growth of democratic culture is, the United States should ...

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