North Korea might be a bad example. I was thinking more along the lines of Singapore or even China, if we're talking East Asia. Aside from some amount of military power (they're boasting a very large army but I'm willing to bet most of their soldiers are malnourished and unimpressive in combat), including nukes, North-Korean style totalitarianism / despotism seems to have earned them nothing worth bragging about in the international community. Their whole country is a bad joke. They're not as well-represented in various country statistics because it's impossible to get accurate data on them, but they'd probably score at the bottom of most indexes. If NK "statesmen" could differentiate between the best interests of the country and their own whims, you'd think they would at least make some effort to raise the GDP per capita to acceptable (read: non-Third World) levels.
That's what leads me to guess that there is some, but not full overlap between state interests and the common good. Political stability, the rule of law, and a strong military have some positive externalities for the populace as well; a police state and a taxation policy that fills the state's coffers only to leave citizens in poverty, not so much.
In general, I believe that the optimal balance between the power of states and their population depends mostly on the level of external threat. The state needs to be strong enough to protect its citizen from aggression, but not stronger.
That would be in its foreign and military policy. What about domestic policy? Taxation, law enforcement, media/propaganda, economic decisions? |
