Within the framework of international environmental conferences a multidimensional model of sustainable development was established, which encompasses economic, social and ecological aspects of long-term responsibility. In meeting the challenges of these aspects, all countries must address the protection of natural resources, the preservation of social cohesion, the promotion of knowledge and innovation as well as the reduction of public debt. Considering the policy performance of countries with different regime types and degrees of democratization in many democracies a sustainability failure seems to exist, while at least some autocracies can realize notable achievements in certain areas. Looking beyond, it also seems questionable from the theoretical level, whether the Churchill assumption of a general superiority of democracy can be maintained in terms of their sustainability performance particularly with regard to the currently given debate on the future oblivion of democracy. Seeing that puzzle on the one hand side the paper will try to compare the sustainability performance of democracies and autocracies in several corresponding policy areas. On the other hand the sustainability impact of democracy and autocracy will be analyzed in each investigated area. This will be reviewed by quantitative analysis, measuring the influence of regime type on the sustainability performance in contrast to the effect of other possible explanatory variables.
