IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ooecxx/v2y2023ip1-19..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The morphing of dictators: why dictators get worse over time

Author

Listed:
  • Kaushik Basu

Abstract

Dictators, even those who seize power with the intention of helping the nation, frequently morph over time into tyrants. There may be many reasons for this. This paper focuses on one interesting and arguably pervasive driver behind this process. A model is developed which shows that the series of decisions taken over time by an authoritarian leader concerning how much political intrigue and evil to indulge in in order to stay in power leads to a dynamic inconsistency converting the leader into a tyrant. It is possible that the dictator will, eventually, come to regret this, but by then they have no exit options. The analysis prompts us to think about ex ante rules and term-limit provisions to prevent this from happening.

Suggested Citation

  • Kaushik Basu, 2023. "The morphing of dictators: why dictators get worse over time," Oxford Open Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 2, pages 1-19.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:ooecxx:v:2:y:2023:i::p:1-19.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ooec/odad002
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ooecxx:v:2:y:2023:i::p:1-19.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/ooec .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.