We first survey theoretical arguments and recent quantitative studies on the relationship between economic development and autocratization and thereafter present a novel analysis, which offers hitherto unmatched empirical coverage. Our investigation examines whether the level of economic or short-term economic growth is related to regimes experiencing autocratization, either as measured by downturns on a continuous democracy measure or as status change on a categorical measure from polyarchy, electoral democracy, or multi-party autocracy, respectively, to lower-level categories. Our results indicate (with some deviations) that economic development bolsters political regimes against autocratization. Moreover, poor, short-term economic performance is significantly related to autocratization with one exception; high-quality democracies (polyarchies) tend to be very stable regardless of their economic performance.