Yesterday, I compared democratic India and the Philippines against communist China and Vietnam, respectively, in a look at some key economic factors and my own research. The commies came out ahead.

I concluded by stating, "we can only hope that democracy is good in the long term, even as many of today's measurements, for better or worse, don't necessarily lead to that conclusion."

Alas, I ignored some of my own research in making that sweeping conclusion.

Eastern Europe to the Fore
In fact, by integrating and balancing a number of technological and societal factors, I recently compiled a Top 25 group of IT-savvy nations that is dominated by democracies.

More accurately, the list is dominated by South Korea and Eastern Europe's democracies.

I call the results of my research the Tau Index, and have written about it extensively.

A look at the Top 25 finds South Korea at the top, with 11 Eastern European nations (all former Soviet republics) making the list: Bulgaria, Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, Hungary, Estonia, Czech Republic, Poland, Latvia, Slovak Republic, and Slovenia. Russia cracks the Top 25 as well.

The primary factor in this index is IT expenditures on a per capita basis, adjusted for local cost-of-living.

Then I weigh income disparity and bandwidth speed heavily into this ranking.

Disparity & Speed
Eastern Europe's nations do very well in the income-disparity category; their former Communist leaders kept everyone poor equally, and two decades of capitalism has not resulted in the income imbalances seen in the developing world and the US - or in China and Russia, for that matter.

Eastern European nations have also been aggressive in deploying high-speed bandwidth connections, particularly with respect to their relatively modest per capita income when compared to the West.

Each of these nations has its own internal challenges and struggles.

Ukraine's Orange Revolution of a few years back featured the almost-fatal poisoning of the man who eventually became its President; its East-West political struggle is far from finished. Romanians continue to complain of endemic corruption and politics as usual.

Western diplomats worry about a potential return to autocracy in Hungary. Poland was thrown into turmoil with the death of its president in a plane crash, in Russia in 2010. It has also been a victim of an ironic lumping of its economy into that of the troubled Eurozone, in the view of many investors and risk analysts. And so it goes throughout the region.

Flaws Major & Minor
As I mentioned yesterday, all of the world's democracies appear flawed in ways major and minor. Even the clean, egalitarian governments of the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Finland have seen tragedy and terror reach their shores. But democracy shows up strong in my research.

These nations make the list through a weighted balance of IT expenditures, wealth and income disparity, bandwidth, and the perception of corruption. The index is weighted against wealthier nations, as I am seeking to find the most dynamic places, nations that have the best chance to grow rapidly through their use of IT. Even so, the few well-developed nations listed above are on a pace to continue to improve their economies, as other nations lag.

My Top 25 list also includes Vietnam and China; revolutionary Egypt; Singapore, Malaysia, and Bangladesh; Morocco; and showing that the West ain't dead yet, Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands, and Canada.

Back to India v China
These findings may contradict my closing statement of yesterday, but they do not address the issue of China's success versus that of India.

There's no mystery here; China's autocrats have been able to focus the country's energy in a way that brooks no nonsense, with spectacular results over the past few decades. India's democracy brooks a lot of nonsense, and its government is seen as an impediment rather than an enabler of economic growth.

So democracy has not won out, economically, in the comparison between the world's two population leaders. Yet we have to ask how long China's autocratic mandarins can keep this up, and how long before India's local and global entrepreneurs can breach the hurdles set in front of them by their duly elected officials. Shall we say 2025? 2030? Ever?

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