Republican Rand Paul’s comments about the 1964 Civil Rights act got his Kentucky U.S. Senate candidacy off to a rocky start. But as Washington Matters columnist Mark Willen notes in this article,  the libertarian Paul clearly has tapped into deep emotions about what government should and shouldn’t do.

Indeed, the debate over whether governments serve best when they govern least, or have absolute control, has raged for centuries.  This infographic looks at the financial prosperity of nations representing five different governmental systems. It shows representative democracies remain more prosperous than absolute monarchies and one-party states generally. The big exception on the world stage is China