Ruling
Fascistville: Mussolini’s new towns and the persistence of neo-fascism
Mario Carillo
Journal of Economic Growth, December 2022, Pages 527–567
Abstract:
This paper explores the link between infrastructures built by autocratic regimes and political values in the wake of the transition to democracy and in the long run. In Fascist Italy (1922–43), Mussolini founded 147 “New Towns” (Città di Fondazione). Exploring municipality-level data before and after their construction, I document (1) that the New Towns enhanced local electoral support for the Fascist Party and (2) that the effect persisted through democratization, enhancing local support for Italy’s neo-fascist party, which endured until recent times. Placebo estimates of New Towns planned but not built and spatial regression discontinuity design both support a causal interpretation of this pattern. Survey respondents near the New Towns currently exhibit preferences for a stronger leader in politics, for nationalism, and for the fascists as such. The effect is greater for individuals who lived under the Fascist Regime and is transmitted across generations inside the family. The findings suggest that authoritarian leaders may exploit public investment programs to induce a favorable view of their ideology, which persists across institutional transitions and over the long term.
Jumping the gun: How dictators got ahead of their subjects
Jacob Gerner Hariri & Asger Mose Wingender
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Economic modernisation is widely seen as a path to democracy, but the technological progress that drives modernisation also provides rulers with new means of repression. We collect data on the international diffusion of 29 repressive military technologies and demonstrate that such technologies spread faster from Western Europe and the United States than economic development. Moreover, in a panel of all independent countries 1820-2010, we show that the rapid diffusion of repressive technologies has impeded democratisation around the world by allowing autocratic rulers to suppress popular resistance against their regimes.
Pour (tear) gas on fire? Violent confrontations and anti-government backlash
Tak-Huen Chau & Kin-Man Wan
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
How do voters in a developed economy react to political violence at the ballot box? Most of the current literature suggests that a social movement turning violent dampens its support. To this end, we examine the effect of violent clashes and indiscriminate state repression on Hong Kong's 2019 municipal election. Using original geocoded data, we proxy violence and repression by the frequency of police shooting tear gas rounds at protesters. Despite the movement turning in part violent, the presence of indiscriminate state repression reduces regime support. We offer evidence that repression de-mobilized pro-regime voters. We discuss possible explanations behind our findings and how the specificity of political violence may matter in shaping public support in protest movements.
How the Party Commands the Gun: The Foreign–Domestic Threat Dilemma in China
Daniel Mattingly
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The leaders of authoritarian states face a dilemma between building a loyal military to guard against domestic threats and a professional military that can guard against foreign threats. In this article, I argue that leaders respond to domestic threats by promoting loyal officers and to foreign threats by promoting experienced officers. I draw on a new dataset, the first of its kind, of over 12,000 appointments to the People's Liberation Army of China. The data show that career ties and combat experience are critical for officer promotion to key military and party offices. However, in periods of high domestic threat, party leaders promote unusually large numbers of officers with personal ties to the top leader. In periods of foreign threat, on the other hand, leaders are more likely to promote officers with prior combat experience. The article challenges the conventional wisdom, showing how autocrats face a trade-off between guarding against internal and external threats.
Do Politically Irrelevant Events Cause Conflict? The Cross-continental Effects of European Professional Football on Protests in Africa
Kyosuke Kikuta & Mamoru Uesugi
International Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine whether politically irrelevant events can cause conflicts, by analyzing the effects of professional football games in Europe on protests in Africa—an unintended spillover across the continents. By expanding psychological theories, we argue that the outcomes of the football games in Europe can affect African people's subjective evaluation of domestic politicians, which in turn can trigger protests. By exploiting as-if random variation in the results of 15,102 close football games conditional on betting odds, we find that compared to draw games, close losses of African players’ teams increase peaceful protests in their original countries while not changing the likelihood of riots or armed conflicts. The effect is particularly large for non-ethnic protests targeted at a central government. Close losses also temporarily decrease people's trust in their country's leader. By contrast, close victories do not have equivalent or compensating effects on protests or public opinion. These results suggest asymmetric misattribution: people in Africa unreasonably blame domestic politicians for bad luck in European football games, prompting protests; but they do not credit politicians with football victories.
"Storm autocracies": Islands as natural experiments
Muhammad Habibur Rahman, Nejat Anbarci & Mehmet Ulubaşoğlu
Journal of Development Economics, November 2022
Abstract:
We exploit the exogenous variation in the timing and intensity of storms in island countries to estimate the storms' effect on the extent of democracy. Using a rich panel dataset spanning the period 1950–2020, our difference-in-differences estimations, which allow multiple treatments over time, indicate that storms trigger autocratic tendencies in island countries by reducing the Polity2 score by about four percent in the following year. These findings resonate with our simple dynamic game-theoretical model, which predicts that governments move towards autocracy by placating citizens with post-disaster assistance in response to citizens’ insurgency threat in the absence of relief, giving rise to the political regime of “storm autocracies”. Our results survive a battery of robustness analyses, randomisation tests, potential spatial biases, and other falsification and placebo checks.
Do longer constitutions corrupt?
Jamie Bologna Pavlik, Israt Jahan & Andrew Young
European Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Tsebelis and Nardi (2016) and Tsebelis (2017) report that constitutional length correlates with lower levels of GDP per capita. They argue that this may be the case because longer constitutions lead to greater corruption. However, uncovering a causal relationship between constitutional length and corruption is difficult. On the one hand, political elites may pressure drafters to include specific provisions that facilitate their rent-seeking efforts. On the other hand, constitutional drafters may be responding to corruption by including a large number of specific safeguards. Our aim in this paper is to explore whether there is a causal effect of constitutional length on corruption. We utilize data from the Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP) to identify 5 cases when a country experienced a ≥50% increase in constitutional length. For each of those cases, we compare the subsequent change in corruption to that of a synthetic control. We report evidence of a significant post-treatment increase in corruption for 3 out of 5 cases (Ecuador in both 1997 and 2008; Venezuela in 1999). However, the 2008 Ecuador result is not robust to a placebo test; and in the case of Venezuela it is difficult to distinguish a constitutional length effect from a “Chavez effect” (Grier and Maynard 2016). The evidence that longer constitutions corrupt is weak.
African Political Institutions and the Impact of Colonialism
Jutta Bolt et al.
NBER Working Paper, October 2022
Abstract:
Conventional wisdom proposes deep historical roots for authoritarianism in Africa: either colonial “decentralized despotism” or enduring structural features. We present a new theoretical perspective. Africans sought autonomous local communities, which constrained precolonial rulers. Colonizers largely left constrained institutions in place given budget limitations. Innovation, where it occurred, typically scaled up councils rather than invented despotic chiefs. To test these implications, we compiled two original datasets that measure precolonial institutions and British colonial administrations around 1950 in 463 local government units. Although colonial institutions were authoritarian at the national level, most Native Authorities were constrained by some type of council and many local institutions lacked a singular ruler entirely. The form of Native Authority institutions and the composition of councils are strongly correlated with precolonial institutional forms. The persistence of institutional constraints at the local level suggests alternative channels through which colonial rule fostered postcolonial authoritarian regimes.
Fiscal capacity in non-democratic states: The origins and expansion of the income tax
Per Andersson
Journal of Institutional Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Fiscal capacity is regularly linked to warfare and democratization. However, the majority of income taxes – a cornerstone of government finance – were introduced by non-democratic states in peacetime. This paper is concerned with how autocratic politics shape the adoption and expansion of income taxes. Political institutions help overcome a commitment problem related to investments in taxation. To avoid being deposed by his or her elite supporters, a ruler needs to guarantee that new taxes will not be used opportunistically (e.g. expropriating the elite). If the elite supporters can effectively monitor the government, any transgressions will be detected and punishable. Institutions such as legislatures solve this commitment problem when they allow oversight and monitoring over the executive branch. The empirical implications are straightforward: in places with strong institutional oversight, which allows the elite to monitor the executive, we should observe higher fiscal capacity. I find support for this by analyzing newly available historical datasets over tax revenues, tax introduction dates, and political institutions.
The long-term effects of genocide on antisocial preferences
Lata Gangadharan et al.
World Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
We conduct an artefactual field experiment to examine the long-term effects of exposure to violence due to the Cambodian genocide (1975–1979), during childhood and adolescence, on individuals’ antisocial behaviors. Since antisocial behavior can co-exist with other preferences, we also investigate the effect of this exposure on prosocial and risk-taking behaviors. We find that as district-level mortality rates increase, individuals who directly experienced violence during the genocide period exhibit greater antisocial and risk-taking behaviors decades later. These effects are relatively muted among individuals who did not directly experience genocidal violence. The results imply significant long-term effects on antisocial and risk preferences in association with direct exposure to genocidal violence.
Feudal Political Economy
Desiree Desierto & Mark Koyama
George Mason University Working Paper, September 2022
Abstract:
The political economy of medieval Europe was shaped by alliances between lords and vassals, forged through peaceful and violent means. We model coalition formation through bargaining or by conquest, and where members can rebel against their coalition. We derive conditions under which a realm unites under one rule — the grand coalition, or remains fragmented into several coalitions. We motivate with key historical episodes, from the Frankish Kingdom in the 5th to 10th centuries and England in the 11th to 15th centuries.