Will of the people
Frédéric Docquier et al.
Journal of Development Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
International migration is an important determinant of institutions, not considered so far in the development literature. Using cross-sectional and panel estimation for a large sample of developing countries, we find that openness to emigration (as measured by the natives’ average emigration rate) has a positive effect on home-country institutional development (as measured by standard democracy indices). The results are robust to a wide range of specifications and identification methods. Remarkably, the cross-sectional estimates are fully in line with the implied long-run relationship from dynamic panel regressions.
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State Fragility and Structural Gender Inequality in Family Law: An Empirical Investigation
Donna Lee Bowen, Valerie Hudson & Perpetua Lynne
Nielsen Laws, December 2015, Pages 654-672
Abstract:
In this paper we examine the linkage of male-dominant family law systems and levels of nation-state security and stability. We expect such societies to be predisposed to parasitical rent-seeking and inefficiency, combined with coercive conflict resolution, resulting in higher levels of violence within the society. We demonstrate empirically that states with inequitable family law also exhibit higher levels of state fragility. Using standard indicators of state stability and security, our empirical results show that the ability to predict levels of state stability and security is significantly enhanced by examining a measure of Inequity in Family Law in addition to more conventional explanatory variables such as literacy rate, level of democracy, and civilizational influence.
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Who was Colonized and When? A Cross-Country Analysis of Determinants
Arhan Ertan, Martin Fiszbein & Louis Putterman
European Economic Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
The process of colonization has shaped the economic and demographic contours of the modern world. In this paper, we study the determinants of the occurrence and timing of colonization of non-European countries by Western European powers. Of particular interest is the role of early development measures that are known to be strong correlates of present-day levels of income. We show that non-European societies with longer histories of agriculture and statehood and higher levels of technology adoption in 1500 were less likely to be colonized, and tended to be colonized later if at all. We also find that proximity to the colonizing powers, disease environment, and latitude are significant predictors of the occurrence and timing of colonization, although their impacts are less robust to choice of country sample. Our models have high explanatory power, and their support for the significance of early development is robust to the use of alternative indicators of early development and disease, to the use of instruments to focus on the exogenous component of early development, and to the joint estimation of the colonization and timing equations to correct for potential selection bias.
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Tyrants and Migrants: Authoritarian Immigration Policy
Adrian Shin
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines the determinants of immigration policy toward low-skilled workers across 13 relatively wealthy autocracies after World War II. I argue that authoritarian immigration policy is a consequence of an autocrat’s redistributive policy. As the distribution of resource rents in rentier autocracies reduces the incentive of domestic labor to enter the labor force, rentier states rely on migrant workers to meet the demand for low-skilled labor. Autocrats without resource rents, however, lack capacity for redistribution, so they use policies that provide people with wages in exchange for their labor while restricting immigration. Using a policy index that measures the extent to which low-skilled migrant workers can get into a country in a given year, I find strong evidence for this argument across 13 autocracies in the post-World War II era.
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Secession Risk and Fiscal Federalism
Jason Sorens
Publius, Winter 2016, Pages 25-50
Abstract:
Why is fiscal federalism so often dysfunctional from an economic point of view? Particularly in the developing world, fiscally decentralized systems often lack hard budget constraints and an open, common market. This article argues that preventing secession can require fiscally deleterious institutions. Beyond the well-known device of “fiscal appeasement,” central governments facing potential secessionist challenges try to hamstring regional tax collection and permit regional protectionism against goods and labor. While ethnic diversity has helped to preserve relatively robust forms of fiscal federalism in Canada and Switzerland, it has had the contrary effect in developing countries. Even among Western democracies, those governments unwilling to countenance secession are less likely to respond to secessionist challenges by decentralizing taxation powers. The political logic of decentralization may stymie efforts to reform decentralized institutions along the lines recommended by economists and the multilateral lending institutions.
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Takaaki Masaki
World Development, March 2016, Pages 51–68
Absract:
Do international donors penalize coups d’état by reducing aid? How significant is the impact of coups on aid flows? These questions have become increasingly important over the past three decades as the concept of political conditionality has gradually permeated the donor community, pushing for stringent actions to be taken against democratic transgressions like coups. I argue that the end of the Cold War was a historical juncture that reshaped the international donor community’s aid-based sanctioning policy toward coups. However, I also posit that the U.S. does not comply with the growing international norm of political conditionality due to its geopolitical interests trumping its rhetorical commitment to penalizing coups. This paper exploits exogenous variation in the success and failure of coups to estimate the causal effect of coup-led regime change on aid flows. My empirical evidence supports the proposition that since the end of the Cold War, the donor community on average has reduced the amounts of aid disbursements in response to coups d’état although the U.S. has been inconsistent in applying aid sanctions against coups both during the Cold War and post-Cold War periods. While demonstrating a genuine shift in the international community’s collective responses toward coups since the end of the Cold War, my findings also attest to potential heterogeneity across major bilateral donors, which may undermine the overall effectiveness of aid and political conditionality.
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Defending the Authoritarian Regime Online: China's “Voluntary Fifty-cent Army”
Rongbin Han
China Quarterly, December 2015, Pages 1006-1025
Abstract:
Recent studies on internet politics in China have gone beyond the once dominant control–liberalization perspective and directed intellectual attention to the varieties of online activism. Based on extensive in-depth online ethnographic work, this project explores the pluralization of online expression in Chinese cyberspace. Following a constituency of internet users who identify themselves as the “voluntary fifty-cent army,” the paper explores how these users acquire and consolidate their identity and combat criticism that targets the authoritarian regime. Analysis of the confrontational exchanges between the “voluntary fifty-cent army” and their opponents suggests that a perspective that goes beyond state censorship and regime-challenging activism is required in order to gain a better understanding of online expression in China. Close examination of why and how internet users may voluntarily defend the authoritarian regime also reveals how the dynamics in online discourse competition may work to the authoritarian regime's advantage.
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The Differentiation of Security Forces and the Onset of Genocidal Violence
Ulrich Pilster, Tobias Böhmelt & Atsushi Tago
Armed Forces & Society, January 2016, Pages 26-50
Abstract:
Which factors drive the onset of genocidal violence? While the previous literature identified several important influences, states’ military capabilities for conducting mass-killings and the structure of their security forces have received surprisingly little attention so far. The authors take this shortcoming as a motivation for their research. A theoretical framework is developed, which argues that more differentiated security forces, that is, forces that are composed of a higher number of independent paramilitary and military organizations, are likely to act as a restraint factor in the process leading to state-sponsored mass-killings. Quantitative analyses support the argument for a sample of state-failure years for 1971–2003, and it is also shown that considering a state’s security force structure improves our ability to forecast genocides.
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Export Diversity and Human Rights
Timothy Peterson
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this article, I synthesize a number of recent studies exploring how exports affect human rights, highlighting a common implication that this relationship is conditional on how exports are associated with leaders’ relative costs of repression and accommodation. Beginning with this synthesis, I develop a theory demonstrating how the composition of exports affects human rights via its impact on leader expectations. More diverse exports promote continued growth and prosperity, provide leaders with greater resources, and suggest conditions less conducive to severe dissent, all of which reduce the relative costs of accommodation. Repression is likely to threaten the benefits otherwise associated with greater export diversity; thus its relative cost increases amid greater export diversity. I test this theory using commodity-level data from the United Nations Comtrade database to create a country-year-level measure of export diversity. Statistical analyses spanning 1981 to 2009 support my expectation. My results are robust to sample restrictions and the use of instrumental variables.
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Coalition Formation and Selectorate Theory: An Experiment
Andrew Bausch
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper uses a laboratory experiment to examine how different rules for re-selecting the leader of a group affects how that leader builds a winning coalition. Leaders play an inter-group game and then distribute winnings from that game within their group before standing for re-selection. The results of the experiment show that leaders of groups with large winning coalition systems rely heavily on distributing winnings through public goods, while leaders of groups with small winning coalition systems are more likely to target specific citizens with private goods. Furthermore, the experiment shows that supporters of small coalition leaders benefit from that support in future rounds by receiving more private goods than citizens that did not support the leader. Meanwhile, citizens that support a large coalition leader do not benefit from this support in future rounds. Therefore, small coalition leaders target individual citizens to maintain a coalition over time in a way not possible in a group with a large winning coalition. Finally, in the experiment, small coalition leaders increased their payoffs over time, suggesting that once power has been consolidated, small coalition leaders narrow their coalition.
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George Akerlof & Dennis Snower
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper explores the role of narrative in economic (and social) decision making. Narrative serves major functions regarding: understanding the environment; focusing attention; predicting events; motivating action; social assignment and identity formation; power relationships; and social norms. These roles of narrative will be explored, in the context of a specific example: a history (which is itself a narrative) regarding the Bolshevik takeover of the Soviet Union. Special attention is paid to the role of narrative both in that takeover and its implications for the subsequent regime.
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Protecting People from Natural Disasters: Political Institutions and Ocean-Originated Hazards
Alejandro Quiroz Flores
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why do some leaders protect their citizens from natural disasters while others do not? This paper argues that leaders in large coalition systems provide more protection against natural disasters than leaders in small coalition systems. Yet, autocrats also provide large-scale disaster protection if members of their winning coalition are exposed to natural hazards. The paper tests these propositions by examining cross-country variation in the number of sea-level stations as a lower bound for protection against ocean-originated disasters. Empirical evidence indicates that leaders in large coalition systems deploy more sea-level stations than their counterparts in small coalition systems. The evidence also shows that if the national capital is close to the coast, thus exposing members of the ruling coalition to ocean-originated hazards, leaders across political systems install more sea-level stations.