Autocracy and democracy?

Question

what are the pros and cons of each?

Answer 1

Autocracy: If the ruler is both intelligent and benevolent, things will work wonderfully.  In those cases, the government is very efficient.  However, Autocracies allow for easy corruption.

Democracy: The general public gets to choose what happens.  This way the people get what they ask for, to some extent.  However, disagreements slow down the democratic process (we can even see this in the American Republic), and people will still be angry that they have to choose between low taxes and public healthcare.  Democracies are also heavily susceptible to the growth of political parties, which often polarize on issues, leaving little ground for moderates to establish themselves in party politics.  On top of that, sometimes people want something stupid, like the enslavement of black people.

Also, Democracies and Republics change leaders much more quickly than autocracies.  As a result, no one person can gain too much power in the government.  However, sometimes this can be a drawback, due to new politicians being inexperienced or incumbents spending too much time trying to get re-elected for office.

However, Democracies and Republics still work better than Autocracies 90% of the time, because Autocrats are giant power-hungry douches (See Castro, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, etc.)

Answer 2

In autocracy, the state is run (at least sometimes) by someone who knows what is good for the state and for its relations with others, while it is not necessarily so in democracy. "Democracy" can be manipulated by wealthy states and syndicates for their own selfish interests.

On the other hand, in democracy, you have freedom of expression, without the fear of being arrested for protesting one thing or the other. Oops, I almost forgot that a new law in the US enables the government to arrest anyone as "enemy of the state"...