Somebody: Say what you will Marvin, but it is the People's Republic of China, a despotism if there ever was one, which is the fastest industrializing country in the world. It is the Russia of managed democracy which has navigated the way back from national distintegration. The East Asian tigers, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan were all autocracies during their periods of industrial lift-off. For that matter, so was Japan, both prior to 1945, and to an extent thereafter, under a distinctly un-Western democracy of one-and-a-half parties and thoroughly managed press.
You don't have to turn to left-nationalist regimes to find evidence for the role of despotism in developing nations outside of the American and European spheres. The explanation is that democracies, while more suceptible to popular opinion, are also more receptive to foreign influence, Western capital, and the disincentive of losing elections to parties financially backed by Washington.
I wouldn't say you need a dictatorship per se. But you do need a very strong state, such as in Japan or Turkey, which inevitably means something less than a free-wheeling liberal polyarchy of political scientists imaginations.
Having said all that, Libya is not a very poor country. As everyone knows, it's probably the best off country in Africa. It may do just fine under bourgeois democracy. I would just question that it would have done so well if it had been bourgeois democratic since independence in 1951.