Ok, Skynet-
But now you raise another troubling problem. COuntries generally do well when they have very autonomous governments (free from social influences) to implement of both political order and economic development.
The problem is that these regimes often survive by repressing dissidents within their own countries.
One of the frequent argument for military coups in Latin America, for instance, has been an argument from the military that it needs to seize the control of goverment order in order to implement a state-building plan (better economic development, better political institutions).
Note- this is not true for Africa. Here the military usually seizes government under the banner of removing corrupt leaders and replacing them with good ones. Sometimes this worls (Mali, Ghana) usually it doesn't (Congo/Zaire). More generally the military seizes power to grab more or the economic goodies from the country.
But that raises the problem- often, without a check on their power, militaries can run a country for their own profits (think Suharto of Indonesia) and while they may push the prosperity of the government, they might also be corrupt in the process.
SO the alternative is democracy, but when you have a new democracy than there are lots of social pressures from different social factions for side payments. Because political leaders need to respond to multiple demands with few resources, lots of people asking for money and little money to go around, they get trapped trying to do many things at the same time. This leads to crisis (and here comes the military again).
At the same time, if they stop having imports than they might allow certain sectors of the economy to grow fat an lazy. What you are basically allowing is a monopoly on the local economy for state firms. Since monopolies lead to inefficiencies, usually the companies grow fat while the people pay higher than average costs.
It's a pickle of a situation.
