Is democracy the best form of government?

According to the Churchill hypothesis, democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. Whether this is true, and if so, to what extent, is:the basic research question addressed in this paper. Drawing on comparative research on politics and policy within democracies, across democracies, and across democracies and dictatorships, the author of this article proposes a major revision of the Churchill hypothesis; According to that revision it is not democracy per se which is superior to all other forms of government. It is rather a particular type of democracy which clearly surpasses the level of political performance of all other forms of government.