IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-03528847.html

Does public debt secure social peace? A diversionary theory of public debt management

Author

Listed:
  • Maxime Menuet

    (LEO - Laboratoire d'Économie d'Orleans [2021-2022] - UO - Université d'Orléans - UT - Université de Tours)

  • Patrick Villieu

    (LEO - Laboratoire d'Économie d'Orleans [2021-2022] - UO - Université d'Orléans - UT - Université de Tours)

  • Marcel Voia

    (LEO - Laboratoire d'Économie d'Orleans [2021-2022] - UO - Université d'Orléans - UT - Université de Tours)

Abstract

This study analyzes the strategic use of public debt. Contrary to the classical view that politicians can use public debt to tie the hands of their successors, we show that an incumbent government can take advantage of having tied its own hands before the election with the help of public debt. By doing this, it reduces the basis for future social conflicts and benefits from social peace during its term, which may enhance its chances of being re-elected. In addition, in the case of foreign or external public debt, the incumbent can strategically divert future social conflicts toward a common enemy (foreign creditors). Thus, by increasing public debt before the election, the incumbent can strengthen social cohesion during his/her mandate, both by reducing the basis of internal conflicts and by diverting citizens from internal toward external rent-seeking activities.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Maxime Menuet & Patrick Villieu & Marcel Voia, 2021. "Does public debt secure social peace? A diversionary theory of public debt management," Post-Print hal-03528847, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03528847
    DOI: 10.1007/s00355-021-01332-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maxime Menuet, 2024. "Natural Resources, Civil Conflicts, and Economic Growth," GREDEG Working Papers 2024-05, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    2. Antonia Lopez Villavicencio & Hugo Oriola, 2025. "National elections and sub-national electoral cycles: Do strong fiscal rules matter in Europe?," Working Papers hal-05002552, HAL.
    3. Maxime Menuet & Hugo Oriola & Patrick Villieu, 2024. "Do conservative central bankers weaken the chances of conservative politicians?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 62(4), pages 681-738, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:hal:journl:hal-03528847. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.