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Autocracy and the public: Mass revolts, winning coalitions, and policy control in dictatorships

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  • Apolte, Thomas

Abstract

Threats of mass revolts could effectively constrain a dictator's public policy if it were not for the collective-action problem. Mass revolts nevertheless happen, but they follow a stochastic pattern. We describe this pattern in a threshold model of collective action and integrate it into an agency model which demonstrates how mass revolts can impact on a winning coalition's incentives to keep backing an incumbent dictator. Having observed public policy and found a sufficiently high posterior probability of the dictator to be of a "bad" character, the winning coalition's members may exploit an incidentally happening mass revolt for escaping a loyalty trap that had otherwise prevented them from switching to disloyalty. While this explains why mass revolts sometimes happen to oust a dictator, the arising policy constraints in dictatorships may nevertheless be weak in practice.

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  • Apolte, Thomas, 2015. "Autocracy and the public: Mass revolts, winning coalitions, and policy control in dictatorships," CIW Discussion Papers 5/2015, University of Münster, Center for Interdisciplinary Economics (CIW).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ciwdps:52015
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Gerling Lena, 2017. "Urban Protests, Coups d’état and Post-Coup Regime Change," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 23(4), pages 1-8, December.
    2. Gerling, Lena, 2017. "Riots and the window of opportunity for coup plotters: Evidence on the link between urban protests and coups d'état," CIW Discussion Papers 2/2017, University of Münster, Center for Interdisciplinary Economics (CIW).
    3. Gerling, Lena, 2017. "Riots and the Window of Opportunity for Coup Plotters: Evidence on the Link between Urban Protests and Coups d’État," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168054, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Autocracy; Revolutions; Threshold Models; Selectorate Theory;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions

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