Conversely, there are plenty of democratic liberal regimes that turn up to be kleptocratic - just look at Brazil as one recent example.

It's also not clear whether kleptocracy can't be implemented in a way such that it's not a significant detriment to development. Singapore is arguably a kleptocracy, but it's a surprisingly well-managed one.

There's long been a hope that integration into the wider economy prevents war - the idea being that countries that trade deeply won't fight each other. The same logic seems to support the idea that trade can also act as a brake on kleptocracy - since stealing would mean harming foreign investment, damaging the goose that lays the golden eggs.

But I think it's mostly a matter of time and happiness of the population. When things are good, the apple cart stays upright. If they turn grim, everything gets a lot more unstable and the extremes come out. Depending on where it goes, it can get into a feedback cycle - I think this happened in Venezuela.

> There's long been a hope that integration into the wider economy prevents war - the idea being that countries that trade deeply won't fight each other.

There was a guy by the name of Norman Angell, who wrote a book called "The Great Illusion" about that exact thing. The premise, to quote Wikipedia, was that "the economic cost of war was so great that no one could possibly hope to gain by starting a war the consequences of which would be so disastrous", on the basis of considerable economic interdependence of major powers.

The book was published in 1909.