Are investors shunning “democratic nations” in favour of “strongmen” who know how to deliver business-friendly results? Countries that practice “strongman” politics appear to have seen their equities and debt markets garner more interest from investors than those traditionally considered more democratic; or so Karin Strohecker and Marc Jones say in a disappointingly facile analytical piece for Reuters. They argue that high-fliers such as China, Egypt, Turkey, and more recently Poland (which elected a nationalist government) illustrate this trend. "Providing governments are responsible fiscally they can get away with a lot of undemocratic measures," said Renaissance Capital global chief economist Charles Robertson. What, then, of Zimbabwe and Venezuela?

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