Political Survival and Endogenous Institutional Change
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6246166 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Bruce Bueno De Mesquita (0000-0001-8582-8330, New York University), Alastair Smith (0000-0002-5291-1442, New York University) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 167-197 |
| Publication date | 2009-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Political Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0010-4140 • E-ISSN: 1552-3829 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010414008323330 |
| OpenAlex | W2144434076 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 103 |
| References cited | 24 |
Incumbent political leaders risk deposition by challengers within the existing political rules and by revolutionary threats. Building on Bueno de Mesquita, Smith, Siverson, and Morrow's selectorate theory, the model here examines the policy responses of office-seeking leaders to revolutionary threats. Whether leaders suppress public goods such as freedom of assembly and freedom of information to hinder the organizational ability of potential revolutionaries or appease potential revolutionaries by increasing the provision of public goods depends, in part, on the sources of government revenues. Empirical tests show that governments with access to revenue sources that require few labor inputs by the citizens, such as natural resource rents or foreign aid, reduce the provision of public goods and increase the odds of increased authoritarianism in the face of revolutionary pressures. In contrast, without these sources of unearned revenues, governments respond to revolutionary pressures by increasing the provision of public goods and democratizing
Authoritarianism · Autocracy · Democracy · Economic rent · Economics · Government (linguistics · Market economy · Microeconomics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public economics · Public good · Revenue · Corruption and Economic Development · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies · Finance · International Development and Aid · Law
Judges and Generals in the Making of Modern Egypt
Responsive Authoritarianism in China
Democratization and Research Methods
Political competition in dynamic economies
Optimal Size of Rebellions
Income Growth and Revolutions
Information Jamming and Capture Cost
The Legacy of Landlords
Liderazgo político para un mundo nuevo
The determinants of democracy
Management of aid and public policy on development. The Cape Verde case
Executive turnovers in sub-Saharan Africa
The Dictator's Digital Toolkit
Retirement planning for dictators
Strategic interaction and social construction in foreign policy analysis
Leader Survival, Sources of Political Insecurity, and International Conflict
Welfare Resource Curse and Blessing? Accounting for Causal Heterogeneity in the Oil‐Welfare Nexus
From Bullets to Boreholes
How Ethnic Exclusion Influences Rebellion and Leader Survival
Foreign aid and political stability
A political economy of human rights
Resource wealth as rent leverage
How political insiders lose out when international aid underperforms
Do Democracies Provide Better Education? Revisiting the Democracy–Human Capital Link
Profits from Peace
Amplifying and nullifying the impact of democratic sanctions through aid to civil society
Security Threats, Enemy-Contingent Policies, and Economic Development in Dictatorships
Multidimensional policies, asymmetric public perception and stability in autocracies
Sanctions and incentives to repudiate external debt
Political leader survival
You can’t always get what you want
The illusory leader
Oil and terrorism
Democracy, Natural Resources, and Infectious Diseases
Remittances, Regime Type, and Government Spending Priorities
When does transparency improve public services? Street‐level discretion, information, and targeting
Oil, Democracy, and Context
Coloured by revolution
Constrained Concessions
Autocratic Elections
The Differential Effects of “Democratic” Institutions on Dissent in Dictatorships
Elections, Protest, and Alternation of Power
A Political Economy of Income Tax Policies
Protecting People from Natural Disasters
The Uses and Abuses of Foreign Aid
Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions
One man, one vote, one time? A model of democratization in the Middle East
Repression, political threats, and survival under autocracy
Helping hand or heavy hand? Foreign aid, regime type and domestic unrest
China and East Asian Democracy
Export Diversity and Human Rights
Can Western Donors Constrain Repressive Governments? Evidence from Debt Relief Negotiations in Africa
Misplaced Blame
The Pernicious Consequences of UN Security Council Membership
Democracy Aid and Electoral Accountability
Why Do Autocrats Disclose? Economic Transparency and Inter-elite Politics in the Shadow of Mass Unrest
The Prince—or Better No Prince? The Strategic Value of Appointing a Successor
Political Succession
The Political Costs of Abusing Human Rights
Donor Fragmentation, Aid Shocks, and Violent Political Conflict
Aid
Of Dominoes and Firewalls
Winning Coalition Size, State Capacity, and Time Horizons
Economic Development Assumptions and the Elusive Curse of Oil
Competition and Collaboration in Aid-for-Policy Deals
A Political Economy of Aid
The Choice of Electoral Systems in Electoral Autocracies
Strategic fiscal spending
Collective learning and regime dynamics under uncertainty
Political consequences of natural disasters
Remembering the counterrevolution
Judging Judgment
Executive Agency and State Capacity in Development
The Durability of Presidential and Parliament-Based Dictatorships
Who Rules? Support Coalitions and Regime Survival, 1789–2020
Staying Out of Trouble
This is what the Bolsheviks do
Elections, Information, and Policy Responsiveness in Autocratic Regimes
Political Order and One-Party Rule
Power Tool or Dull Blade? Selectorate Theory for Autocracies
More Inequality, More Killings
Markets, Hierarchies, and Networks
China's Strategic Censorship
Mining and Local Corruption in Africa
Leader Survival, Revolutions, and the Nature of Government Finance
Democracy by Demand? Reinvestigating the Effect of Self-expression Values on Political Regime Type
Feudalism, Collaboration and Path Dependence in England’s Political Development
The British Academy Brian Barry Prize Essay
Leader Survival and Natural Disasters
Further Twenty Years of Pathologies? Is Rational Choice better than it used to be
Coalitions, Carrots, and Sticks
Authoritarian Evolution
Loyalty in world politics
Do sanctions spell disaster? Economic sanctions, political institutions, and technological safety
Property rights in dictatorships
Social hierarchies in democracies and authoritarianism
Elite mobility and continuity during a regime change
Endogenous networks and international cooperation
Constrained by the bank and the ballot
Regime Change and Revolutionary Entrepreneurs
Natural Resource Abundance and Economic Growth
The curse of natural resources
Who Gives Foreign Aid to Whom and Why?
The End of Poverty
Democracy and Development
The Logic of Political Survival
On the Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
The end of poverty
Do Institutions Cause Growth
Constitutions and Commitment
The End of Poverty
A Foreign Policy Model of U.S. Bilateral Aid Allocation
Natural Resources, Conflict, and Conflict Resolution
The Political Economy of the Resource Curse
The Perils of Unearned Income
Foreign Aid and Policy Concessions
Resource Wealth and Political Regimes in Africa
A Foreign-Policy Model of the Distribution of British Bilateral Aid, 1960–70
Modernization
Do Institutions Cause Growth
Some Social Requisites of Democracy
A Theory of Endogenous Institutional Change
Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development
The Tinpot and the Totalitarian
| Unique citing works | 103 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 6,06 |
| Citation span | 2009 - 2026 (18) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 103 |