Plotters
Earthquakes, Religion, and Transition to Self-Government in Italian Cities
Marianna Belloc, Francesco Drago & Roberto Galbiati
Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper presents a unique historical experiment to explore the dynamics of institutional change in the Middle Ages. We have assembled a novel dataset, where information on political institutions for northern-central Italian cities between 1000 and 1300 is matched with detailed information on the earthquakes that occurred in the area and period of interest. Exploiting the panel structure of the data, we document that the occurrence of an earthquake retarded institutional transition from autocratic regimes to self-government (the commune) in cities where the political and the religious leaders were one and the same person (Episcopal see cities), but not in cities where political and religious powers were distinct (non-Episcopal see cities). Such differential effect holds both for destructive seismic episodes and for events that were felt by the population but did not cause any material damage to persons or objects. Ancillary results show that seismic events provoked a positive and statistically significant differential effect on the construction and further ornamentation of religious buildings between Episcopal and non-Episcopal see cities. Our findings are consistent with the idea that earthquakes, interpreted in the Middle Ages as manifestation of the will and outrage of God, represented a shock to people’s religious beliefs and, as a consequence, enhanced the ability of political-religious leaders to restore social order after a crisis relative to the emerging communal institutions. This interpretation is supported by historical evidence.
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Jeanet Sinding Bentzen, Nicolai Kaarsen & Asger Moll Wingender
Journal of the European Economic Association, forthcoming
Abstract:
Irrigated agriculture makes societies more likely to be ruled by authoritarian regimes. Ancient societies have long been thought to follow this pattern. We empirically show that irrigation affects political regimes even in the present. To avoid endogeneity, we use geographical and climatic variation to identify irrigation dependent societies. We find that countries whose agriculture depended on irrigation are about six points less democratic on the 21-point polity2 scale than countries where agriculture has been rainfed. We find qualitatively similar results across regions within countries. We argue that the effect has historical origins: irrigation allowed landed elites in arid areas to monopolize water and arable land. This made elites more powerful and better able to oppose democratization. Consistent with this conjecture, we show that irrigation dependence predicts land inequality both at the country level, and in premodern societies surveyed by ethnographers.
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Free and fair elections: A new database
Sylvia Bishop & Anke Hoeffler
Journal of Peace Research, July 2016, Pages 608-616
Abstract:
The holding of elections has become universal but only about half of all elections are free and fair. Electoral malpractice not only distorts the quality of representation but has implications for political, social and economic outcomes. Existing datasets either provide information on election quality for a large number of elections but offer little detail, or they provide very detailed information for a small number of elections. Our data collection effort closes this gap by providing ten variables of election quality for all leadership elections for the period 1975–2011. We use these data to provide an assessment of elections that is closely tied to the commonly used term ‘free and fair’. We define ‘freeness’ of the election as the rules of the election and the process leading up to the election, and ‘fairness’ of the election refers to the events on the election day. Our data show that the quality of elections has declined over time. These electoral problems are mainly due to issues in the run-up to the elections. Using probit regressions we investigate the possible causes of election malpractice. Our analysis suggests that the freeness and the fairness of the elections are related to a number of variables, such as income, aid, executive constraints and the presence of election monitors, but that these variables have differential effects on freeness and fairness.
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Regime Stability and the Persistence of Traditional Practices
Michael Poyker
University of California Working Paper, July 2016
Abstract:
I investigate the role of national institutions on the persistence of cultural norms and traditions. In particular, I examine why the harmful tradition of female genital mutilation (FGM) persists in certain African countries while in others it has been successfully eradicated. I argue that people are more willing to abandon their institutions and traditions if they are sure that the government is durable enough to set up long term replacements for them. If the regime is weak, people revert to their traditional cultural norms. I exploit the fact that ethnic groups in Africa were artificially partitioned by national borders and, using a country-ethnicity panel dataset, I show that one standard deviation in political regime durability explains at least 14% of the standard deviation of the share of circumcised women. The results are robust to an array of control variables and robustness checks. I confirm that the results are unlikely to be spurious by using within nation variation in regime durability induced by leaders' deaths from natural causes.
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Who Supports Violent Extremism in Developing Countries? Analysis of Attitudes Based on Value Surveys
Elena Ianchovichina & Youssouf Kiendrebeogo
World Bank Working Paper, June 2016
Abstract:
What are the common characteristics among radicalized individuals, willing to justify attacks targeting civilians? Drawing on information on attitudes toward extreme violence and other characteristics of 30,787 individuals from 27 developing countries around the world, and employing a variety of econometric techniques, this paper identifies the partial correlates of extremism. The results suggest that the typical extremist who supports attacks against civilians is more likely to be young, unemployed and struggling to make ends meet, relatively uneducated, and not as religious as others, but more willing to sacrifice own life for his or her beliefs. Gender and marital status are not found to explain significantly the individual-level variation in attitudes toward extremism. Although these results may vary in magnitude and significance across countries and geographic regions, they are robust to various sensitivity analyses.
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Bias and Trust in Authoritarian Media
Rory Truex
Princeton Working Paper, June 2016
Abstract:
How do citizens living under authoritarian rule perceive state-controlled news? Building on existing research on media bias in the U.S., this paper presents findings from a survey experiment that exposes Chinese citizens to different news stories, randomly assigning the putative source as well as the content itself. The core result is that respondents are aware of pro-regime biases in official mouthpieces but trust these outlets more anyway. Open-ended questions reveal two likely mechanisms. Citizens either a.) genuinely support the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and want pro-government news media or b.) are better able to "back out the biases" from the reliably slanted official papers. Existing models of media politics must be amended to account for the dominance of official papers in authoritarian settings.
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Revolutionary Leaders and Mass Killing
Nam Kyu Kim
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article argues that revolutionary leaders are more willing to commit mass killing than nonrevolutionary leaders. Revolutionary leaders are more ideologically committed to transforming society, more risk tolerant, and more likely to view the use of violence as appropriate and effective. Furthermore, such leaders tend to command highly disciplined and loyal organizations, built in the course of revolutionary struggles, that can perpetrate mass killing. This study uses time series cross-sectional data from 1955 to 2004 to demonstrate that revolutionary leaders are more likely to initiate genocide or politicide than nonrevolutionary leaders. The violent behaviors of revolutionary leaders are not limited to the immediate postrevolutionary years but also occur later in their tenure. This demonstrates that the association of revolutionary leaders and mass killing is not simply indicative of postrevolutionary instability. This article also provides evidence for the importance of exclusionary ideologies in motivating revolutionary leaders to inflict massive violence.
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The Rebels’ Credibility Dilemma
Jakana Thomas, William Reed & Scott Wolford
International Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines why rebel groups make large demands of governments that are inconsistent with their fighting capacity, especially when such demands are almost always rejected. We show that making large demands, even if ultimately rejected by the government, makes sense for rebels who face a credibility dilemma. Such a dilemma is most likely to arise when militarily weak rebel groups face governments of uncertain strength and can commit to fight credibly only when they believe the government is also weak. This results in a counterintuitive set of strategic incentives for weak rebels, who choose their demands to ensure that they are rejected even when the government is weak. Thus, to make their threat to fight credible, weak rebels make large demands that, when rejected, result in inefficient fighting. Since most civil wars are characterized by weak rebels bargaining with much stronger governments, it is important to understand how this particular feature of civil war shapes intrawar negotiations between the rebels and the government. We develop a model of bargaining between a government and rebel group and evaluate its implications using historical data on civil conflict in Africa from 1989 to 2010. The results suggest that the tendency for the government to be significantly stronger than rebels induces rebel groups to make unrealistically large demands.
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Crowdsourcing the Egyptian Constitution: Social Media, Elites, and the Populace
Tofigh Maboudi & Ghazal Nadi
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Drawing on empirical evidence from online citizen feedback on the 2012 Egyptian Constitution, we demonstrate that despite normative skepticism about implications of participatory constitution making, citizen participation matters. Using data of more than 650,000 online votes and comments on the constitution, we find that draft provisions with higher public approval are less likely to change and those with lower approval are more likely to change. We also find that Articles related to rights and freedoms are more likely to change based on online public input. Finally, following the boycott of the Constituent Assembly by non-Islamists, changes in draft Articles based on public feedback drop sharply. These findings highlight the conditions under which participatory constitution making becomes more effective. First, consensus among citizens over the most salient issues increases the probability that those issues would be successfully incorporated in the constitution. Second, without ex ante elite agreement over the design of the constitution, it becomes difficult to account for citizen proposals amid political clash between elites.
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Democracy and the demographic transition
Ben Wilson & Tim Dyson
Democratization, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article addresses the role of demographic factors in contributing to the emergence of democracy. It maintains that, other things being equal, progress in the demographic transition promotes democratization. The argument is developed with reference to the effects of interrelated changes in mortality, natural increase (i.e. population growth), fertility, and population age structure. Suggestions are also made with respect to how demographic and democratic trends should be gauged. An analysis of data for the period 1970–2005 for 77 countries that were initially non-democratic provides substantial support for the argument. Some implications are discussed, as are future trends in democratization from a demographer’s perspective.
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Countering Coups: Leadership Succession Rules in Dictatorships
Erica Frantz & Elizabeth Stein
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Paradoxically, many dictators agree to institutionalized succession rules even though these rules could regulate their removal from office. This study shows that succession rules, like other pseudo-democratic institutions in authoritarian regimes, provide survival benefits for dictators. Specifically, they protect dictators from coup attempts because they reduce elites’ incentives to try to grab power preemptively via forceful means. By assuaging the ambition of some elites who have more to gain with patience than with plotting, institutionalized succession rules hamper coordination efforts among coup plotters, which ultimately reduce a leader’s risk of confronting coups. Based on a variety of statistical models, including instrumental variables regression that addresses potential endogeneity between succession rules and coup attempts, the empirical evidence supports the authors’ hypothesis that institutions governing leadership succession reduce the likelihood that dictators confront coups. This study clarifies one of the ways in which institutions in dictatorships help autocratic leaders survive.
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Weapons of choice: The effect of natural resources on terror and insurgencies
Axel Dreher & Merle Kreibaum
Journal of Peace Research, July 2016, Pages 539-553
Abstract:
This article investigates the effect of natural resources on whether ethno-political groups choose to pursue their goals with nonviolent as compared to violent means, distinguishing terrorism from insurgencies. It is hypothesized that whether or not the extraction of fossil fuels sparks violence depends both on the group’s characteristics and the state’s reaction. Data are taken from the Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior (MAROB) project, covering 118 organizations in 13 countries of the Middle East and North Africa over the 1980–2004 period. The multinomial logit models combine group- and country-specific information and show that ethno-political groups are more likely to resort to rebellion rather than using nonviolent means or becoming terrorists when representing regions rich in oil. This effect is enhanced for groups already enjoying regional autonomy or being supported by a foreign state but can be mitigated by power-sharing arrangements. These results are thus in line with the argument that economic considerations, or ‘greed’, dominate over political considerations, or ‘grievances’, with regard to violent conflicts. The opposite appears to hold considering terrorism, as we do not find any evidence for a resource curse here, but find an increasing effect of political discrimination and a decreasing effect of regional autonomy.
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James Robinson & Ragnar Torvik
Journal of the European Economic Association, August 2016, Pages 907–942
Abstract:
We develop a model to understand the incidence of presidential and parliamentary institutions. Our analysis is predicated on two ideas: first, that minorities are relatively powerful in a parliamentary system compared to a presidential system, and second, that presidents have more power with respect to their own coalition than prime ministers do. These assumptions imply that while presidentialism has separation of powers, it does not necessarily have more checks and balances than parliamentarism. We show that political leaders who prefer presidentialism may be supported by their own coalition if they fear losing agenda-setting power to another group. We argue that the model is consistent with a great deal of qualitative information about presidentialism in Africa and Latin America.
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Investing in stability: Economic interdependence, coups d’état, and the capitalist peace
Jonathan Powell & Mwita Chacha
Journal of Peace Research, July 2016, Pages 525-538
Abstract:
The capitalist peace thesis argues transnational economic ties have a pacifying effect on interstate relations. An extension of this literature reports that economic ties can prompt belligerents in civil conflicts to peacefully resolve their disputes and can attract third-party intervention from states with strong economic ties. This pacifying effect of economic ties, we argue, is applicable in the context of coups d’état: as a state becomes more economically interdependent with the rest of the world, the opportunity costs of domestic political disturbances are raised for both the targeted state and its financial partners. These costs – potential economic losses and a damaged economic reputation – influence belligerents in the state to use constitutional means to resolve their disputes while providing stronger incentives to foreign economic partners to influence the calculus of these belligerents as they consider the coup attempt. We test this argument quantitatively by investigating the influence of a dozen indicators of economic openness on coups in a global sample of states from 1952 to 2007. Our findings demonstrate the applicability of the capitalist peace thesis to coups d’état, manifestations of political uncertainty that are less likely to be accompanied by substantial loss of life or destruction of infrastructure.
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Foreign Direct Investment and Authoritarian Stability
Daehee Bak & Chungshik Moon
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines how foreign direct investment (FDI) affects the likelihood of authoritarian leaders’ political survival. We argue that FDI reduces the likelihood of experiencing political challenges from elites. We present two mechanisms for this claim. First, the host governments of authoritarian regimes can use FDI for long-term private good provision, so that FDI helps them to appease elite dissents and to buy off potential elite challengers. Second, FDI mitigates a commitment problem between elites and authoritarian leadership by creating an FDI-related distributional coalition, which in turn makes political defections costly to both parties. Our empirical tests using various two-stage estimators show that FDI significantly decreases the likelihood of elite-driven authoritarian leadership failure and coup attempt.
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Examining the Development of Judicial Independence
Kirk Randazzo, Douglas Gibler & Rebecca Reid
Political Research Quarterly, September 2016, Pages 583-593
Abstract:
Scholars who examine judicial independence offer various theories regarding its development. Some argue that it serves as a type of insurance for regimes who believe their majority status is in jeopardy. Other scholars argue that insurance theory does not offer an adequate explanation until states democratize. We argue that part of the explanation for these mixed results involves the inadequacy of insurance theory as a complete explanation. Our paper develops a multidimensional theory that focuses on the interplay of constraints on ruling elites derived from levels of political competition within the government, the potential for social competition within the state, and regime type. We test our argument using a dataset of approximately 145 countries over forty years, and our results support the argument that development of judicial independence is related to the political landscape encountered by the executive. Ethnic fractionalization in the state, political competition, and regime type each has a conditional effect on the observation of judicial independence.
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Peace from the past: Pre-colonial political institutions and civil wars in Africa
Tore Wig
Journal of Peace Research, July 2016, Pages 509-524
Abstract:
Research on the relationship between political institutions and civil war has paid insufficient attention to the role of traditional institutions in developing countries. This study presents large-N evidence showing that traditional ethnic institutions with origins prior to Western colonization are associated with the prevalence of civil wars in Africa after independence. Matching ethnographic data on the pre-colonial political organization of African indigenous groups to contemporary data on ethnic groups in conflict, I investigate the relationship between the traditional organization of ethnic groups and ethnic civil wars in Africa after decolonization. Specifically, I argue that excluded groups with centralized traditional institutions can rely on these institutions to more credibly bargain with the state, and that this reduces their risk of conflict. Accordingly, I find that excluded groups with centralized pre-colonial institutions are less likely to be involved in civil wars.