The authors of this ambitious book address a fundamental political question: why are leaders who produce peace and prosperity turned out of office while those who preside over corruption, war, and misery endure? Considering this political puzzle, they also answer the related economic question of why some countries experience successful economic development and others do not. The authors construct a provocative theory on the selection of leaders and present specific formal models from which their central claims can be deduced. They show how political leaders allocate resources and how institutions for selecting leaders create incentives for leaders to pursue good and bad public policy. They also extend the model to explain the consequences of war on political survival. Throughout the book, they provide illustrations from history, ranging from ancient Sparta to Vichy France, and test the model against statistics gathered from cross-national data. The authors explain the political intuition underlying their theory in nontechnical language, reserving formal proofs for chapter appendixes. They conclude by presenting policy prescriptions based on what has been demonstrated theoretically and empirically.
Author(s): Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson, James D. Morrow
Publisher: The MIT Press
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 550
Contents......Page 8
Preface......Page 12
I A THEORY OF POLITICAL INCENTIVES......Page 16
1 Reigning in the Prince......Page 18
Three Puzzles......Page 19
The Essence of the Argument......Page 22
Organization of the Investigation......Page 23
A Theory of Political Incentives: Part I......Page 24
Policy Choice and Political Survival: Part II......Page 27
Choosing Institutions for Political Selection: Part III......Page 28
Why Focus on Political Survival?......Page 30
Threats to Political Survival......Page 38
Challenges to Political Survival......Page 41
Easy Answers, Inadequate Answers......Page 46
An Incomplete Theory of Institutional Political Laws......Page 49
2 The Theory: Definitions and Intuition......Page 52
The Elements of the Polity......Page 53
The Selectorate (S)......Page 56
The Winning Coalition (W)......Page 66
Illustrative Examples of Small, Restrictive Winning Coalitions......Page 70
Sources of Risks and Rewards......Page 72
The Challenger’s Commitment Problem......Page 74
Affinity......Page 75
Political Systems: Analogies But Not Equivalence......Page 84
What Is Missing from Our Theory......Page 89
Conclusion......Page 90
3 A Model of the Selectorate Theory......Page 92
Economic Activity, Policy Provision, and Payoffs......Page 93
Equilibria of the Selectorate Model......Page 95
Alternative Equilibrium......Page 105
How Institutions Structure Incentives......Page 106
Further Implications......Page 114
Conclusion......Page 119
Appendix......Page 121
II POLICY CHOICE AND POLITICAL SURVIVAL......Page 142
4 Institutions for Kleptocracy or Growth......Page 144
Measurement Issues......Page 147
Institutional Variables......Page 148
Measurement of Labor, Leisure, and Taxes......Page 155
Evidence: Labor or Leisure......Page 158
Evidence: Taxation......Page 162
Economic Growth......Page 164
Government Expenditures, Expenditures Per Capita, and Opportunities for Kleptocracy......Page 176
Conclusion......Page 186
The Shift from Public to Private Goods in Sparta......Page 188
Empirical Assessments: Core Public Goods......Page 194
General Public Goods......Page 201
Public Goods Summary......Page 213
Empirical Assessment of the Provision of Private Goods......Page 215
Montesquieu, Madison, Population, and Public Welfare......Page 222
Leopold II: An Illustration......Page 223
Conclusion......Page 228
6 War, Peace, and Coalition Size......Page 230
The Democratic Peace......Page 233
The Debate......Page 235
The Dyadic Selectorate Model......Page 239
Structure of the Dyadic Selectorate Game......Page 241
Solving the Game......Page 247
The Decision to Fight or to Negotiate......Page 251
The Selectorate Peace: Interaction of Polities......Page 258
Diversionary War and Compromise Agreements......Page 263
Empirical Assessments......Page 265
Conclusion......Page 278
Appendix......Page 280
7 Political Survival......Page 288
Survival as Explained by the Selectorate Theory......Page 291
Mamluk Egypt......Page 304
Empirical Assessment of Political Survival......Page 307
Extrapolitical Risks of Deposition......Page 326
A Tale of Two Countries......Page 334
Conclusion......Page 339
III CHOOSING INSTITUTIONS......Page 342
8 Institutional Preferences: Change from Within......Page 344
The Selectorate Theory and Institutional Preferences......Page 346
Oppression......Page 353
Political Actions to Alter Institutions......Page 369
Population Migration: The Disenfranchised and the Selectorate......Page 370
Protest, Civil War, and Revolution......Page 376
Purges and Coups d’état: Actions by Coalition Members......Page 397
Actions by Leaders: Constructing Autocracy......Page 415
Conclusion......Page 417
9 The Enemy Outside and Within: War and Changes of Leaders and Regimes......Page 420
Selection Institutions and War Aims......Page 421
The Anglo-Soviet Invasion of Iran......Page 439
Testing the War Aims Argument......Page 441
Leadership Removal......Page 454
War and Domestic Change......Page 456
Nation Building After Disputes......Page 466
Franco, Mussolini, and the Enemy Within......Page 469
Conclusion......Page 470
Appendix......Page 471
The Hobbes Index......Page 476
Explaining the Hobbes Index......Page 480
What Can Be Done?......Page 498
Conclusion......Page 500
Notes......Page 502
References......Page 518
C......Page 534
D......Page 536
E......Page 537
G......Page 538
I......Page 539
K......Page 540
L......Page 541
M......Page 542
O......Page 543
P......Page 544
R......Page 546
S......Page 547
T......Page 548
W......Page 549
Z......Page 551
