Eve of the revolution
When does America drop dictators?
John Owen & Michael Poznansky
European Journal of International Relations, December 2014, Pages 1072-1099
Abstract:
The Obama administration’s initial ambivalence toward democratic revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 points to a central puzzle in US foreign policy. In some countries, during some periods, America promotes liberal democracy; in other countries and periods, it tolerates or even supports authoritarianism. Why the variation? We focus on discrete decisions by a US President to retain a dictator or instead press for democracy in a client state S. Two conditions must be satisfied for a President to do the latter. (1) An exogenous domestic crisis must threaten S’s authoritarian regime. (2) The US domestic model of free-market liberal democracy must face no credible alternative in S’s region as a route to national development and security. A credible alternative model (e.g. communism or Islamism) threatens US interests by making dissenting elites in S more hostile to US hegemony and more accepting of the hegemony of America’s security rivals; that in turn makes free elections in S riskier for Washington. But when conditions (1) and (2) coincide, a new bargain emerges: S’s elites, now assenting to the US model, pledge to participate in the US-sponsored regional order, and Washington presses S’s regime into democratizing. We test our argument against two cases involving relations between the US and the Philippines, an authoritarian client until 1986. In a 1978 crisis, communism’s high credibility in Southeast Asia forced Jimmy Carter to continue supporting the Marcos dictatorship. In a 1985–86 crisis, communism’s lack of credibility allowed Ronald Reagan to drop Marcos and permit democracy.
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The Persistent Effect of Colonialism on Corruption
Luis Angeles & Kyriakos Neanidis
Economica, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper argues that corruption in developing countries has deep historical roots that go all the way back to their colonial experience. We substantiate our thesis with empirical evidence where the degree of European settlement during colonial times is a powerful explanatory factor of present-day corruption. Interestingly, our mechanism is different from the prevailing view in the literature on institutions and growth, where European settlement has only positive effects. We argue that European settlement leads to higher levels of corruption for all countries where Europeans remained a minority in the population, i.e. for all developing countries.
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The Effect of Inequality and Social Identity on Party Strategies
Margit Tavits & Joshua Potter
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
How do parties decide which issues to emphasize during electoral competition? We argue that the answer to this question depends on how parties of the left and of the right respond to economic inequality. Increasing inequality shifts the proportion of the population falling into lower socioeconomic categories, thereby increasing the size of the electoral constituency that is receptive toward leftist parties' redistributive economic appeals. In the face of rising inequality, then, leftist parties will emphasize economic issues in their manifestos. By contrast, the nonredistributive economic policies often espoused by rightist parties will not appeal to this burgeoning constituency. Rather, we argue, rightist parties will opt to emphasize values-based issues, especially in those cases where “social demand” in the electorate for values-based representation is high. We find support for these relationships with hierarchical regression models that draw from data across hundreds of parties in a diverse set of the world's democracies.
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Elections, Information, and Policy Responsiveness in Autocratic Regimes
Michael Miller
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
The responsiveness of policy to election results is a central component of democracy. Do the outcomes of autocratic elections also affect policy choice? Even when the threat of turnover is low, I argue that autocratic elections influence policy by allowing citizens to signal dissatisfaction with the regime. Supplementing existing work, this study explains how this opposition is communicated credibly and then shows that ruling parties use this information to calibrate policy concessions. In the first cross-country analysis of autocratic election outcomes and policy choice, I find that negative electoral shocks to ruling parties predict increases in education and social welfare spending and decreases in military spending following elections. In contrast, there is no policy effect leading up to elections, in response to violent contestation, or in resource-rich regimes, illustrating a potential mechanism for the resource curse.
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Long-term environmental change and geographical patterns of violence in Darfur, 2003–2005
Alexander De Juan
Political Geography, March 2015, Pages 22–33
Abstract:
This paper investigates spatial associations between environmental change and violence in Darfur. Long-term variations in the geographical distribution of water and vegetative resources can foster migration from areas with decreasing levels of resource availability to areas with increasing levels. Rising ethnic diversity and resource competition can, in turn, escalate the risk of violence in areas of high in-migration. This paper employs a multimethod approach to investigate this hypothesis. Qualitative evidence is used to demonstrate the plausibility of the argument for the case of Darfur. The quantitative analysis is based on information retrieved from satellite imagery on long-term vegetation change and the spatial distribution of attacks on villages in the early phase of the civil war (2003–2005). The findings indicate that violence has been more likely and intense in areas that experienced increasing availability of water and vegetative resources during the 20 years prior to the civil war.
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International Labor Mobility, Redistribution, and Domestic Political Liberalization
David Bearce & Jennifer Laks Hutnick
Economics & Politics, November 2014, Pages 411–430
Abstract:
Do international labor flows influence the prospects for democratization both in the countries that export their excess workers and in the countries that import them? This paper argues that emigration should have a positive effect on political liberalization in net source countries because it decreases the amount of redistribution that would occur in a more democratic regime. Conversely, immigration should have a negative effect on political liberalization in net destination countries through the same causal channel: by increasing the amount of redistribution that would occur in a more democratic regime. South Korea and Singapore are considered as illustrative examples, and the paper provides statistical evidence to support the hypothesis that emigration (immigration) has been positively (negatively) related to future political liberalization.
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Income, Democracy, and Leader Turnover
Daniel Treisman
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
While some believe that economic development prompts democratization, others contend that both result from distant historical causes. Using the most comprehensive estimates of national income available, I show that development is associated with more democratic government — but mostly in the medium run (10 to 20 years). This is because higher income tends to induce breakthroughs to more democratic politics only after an incumbent dictator leaves office. And in the short run, faster economic growth increases the ruler's survival odds. Leader turnover appears to matter because of selection: In authoritarian states, reformist leaders tend to either democratize or lose power relatively quickly, so long-serving leaders are rarely reformers. Autocrats also become less activist after their first year in office. This logic helps explain why dictators, concerned only to prolong their rule, often inadvertently prepare their countries for jumps to democracy after they leave the scene.
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Crowdseeding in Eastern Congo: Using Cell Phones to Collect Conflict Events Data in Real Time
Peter Van der Windt & Macartan Humphreys
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Poor-quality data about conflict events can hinder humanitarian responses and bias academic research. There is increasing recognition of the role that new information technologies can play in producing more reliable data faster. We piloted a novel data-gathering system in the Democratic Republic of Congo in which villagers in a set of randomly selected communities report on events in real time via short message service. We first describe the data and assess its reliability. We then examine the usefulness of such “crowdseeded” data in two ways. First, we implement a downstream experiment on aid and conflict and find evidence that aid can lead to fewer conflict events. Second, we examine conflict diffusion in Eastern Congo and find evidence that key dynamics operate at very micro levels. Both applications highlight the benefit of collecting conflict data via cell phones in real time.
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The Power of the Street: Evidence from Egypt's Arab Spring
Daron Acemoglu, Tarek Hassan & Ahmed Tahoun
NBER Working Paper, November 2014
Abstract:
During Egypt's Arab Spring, unprecedented popular mobilization and protests brought down Hosni Mubarak's government and ushered in an era of competition between three groups: elites associated with Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP), the military, and the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. Street protests continued to play an important role during this power struggle. We show that these protests are associated with differential stock market returns for firms connected to the three groups. Using daily variation in the number of protesters, we document that more intense protests in Tahrir Square are associated with lower stock market valuations for firms connected to the group currently in power relative to non-connected firms, but have no impact on the relative valuations of firms connected to other powerful groups. We further show that activity on social media may have played an important role in mobilizing protesters, but had no direct effect on relative valuations. According to our preferred interpretation, these events provide evidence that, under weak institutions, popular mobilization and protests have a role in restricting the ability of connected firms to capture excess rents.
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Farming or Fighting? Agricultural Price Shocks and Civil War in Africa
Hanne Fjelde
World Development, March 2015, Pages 525–534
Abstract:
This article links lower economic returns in the labor-intensive agricultural sector to a higher risk of armed conflict at the local level. It argues that income shocks, followed by rising unemployment and lower wages in the rural economy, facilitate rebel recruitment and strengthen civilian support for rebel movements. Focusing on Africa, the article introduces a location-specific measure of changes to the value of local agricultural output by combining sub-national crop production maps with data on movements in global agricultural prices. The results show that negative changes to the local agricultural price index significantly and substantially increase the risk of violent events.
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He Who Counts Elects: Economic Elites, Political Elites, and Electoral Fraud
Isaías Chaves, Leopoldo Fergusson & James Robinson
Economics & Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
What determines the extent of electoral fraud? This paper constructs a model of the tradeoff between fraud and policy concessions (public good provision) which also incorporates the strength of the state. In addition, we parameterize the extent to which economic elites (to whom fraud is costly) and political elites (to whom fraud is advantageous) “overlap.” The model predicts that fraud will be lower and public good provision higher when land inequality is higher, the overlap between elites lower, and the strength of the state higher. We test these predictions using a unique, municipal-level dataset from Colombia's 1922 Presidential elections. We find empirical support for all the predictions of the model.
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Security, Clarity of Responsibility, and Presidential Approval
Ryan Carlin, Gregory Love & Cecilia Martínez-Gallardo
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
The importance of institutions in shaping citizens’ ability to punish or reward politicians for economic outcomes is well established. Where institutions divide authority, politicians can blame each other and citizens find it harder to assign responsibility for policy failures; where institutions clarify lines of authority, citizens can better hold politicians accountable. However, this argument assumes that citizens perceive policy responsibility as shared among political actors and this is not always the case. Looking at security policy, we argue that when policy responsibility is concentrated in a single actor the effect of institutions on blame attribution is different from what the economic voting literature predicts. Divided government in this context makes blame-shifting less effective and makes it more likely that citizens will punish incumbents. By contrast, the ability of executives to control the narrative around security failures by blaming the perpetrators, especially during unified government, can help them avoid blame.