Why and how do authoritarian regimes pursue development strategies that eventually undermine their survival, while democracies under similar conditions exhibit different developmental patterns? I develop a dynamic model where education simultaneously fosters human capital and civic culture, which shapes political behavior asymmetrically across regimes. Under autocracy, growing civic culture increases regime change risk, creating a modernization threat that compels rulers to strategically curb investment as development proceeds, resulting in a hump-shaped development path of rapid growth followed by strategic stagnation. Under democracy, civic culture strengthens electoral accountability, but outcomes are history-dependent: weak initial civic foundations trap societies in low-investment equilibria, while sufficiently strong civic culture triggers virtuous cycles of sustained development. This asymmetry—where civic culture threatens autocratic survival but enables democratic accountability—explains divergent modernization paths. The model reconciles why some autocracies achieve impressive early growth yet face self-limiting development, while democracies exhibit varying performance depending on civic foundations, offering new insights into the political economy of long-run development.

scoco@ceibs.edu