Abstract: We study the formation of a ruling coalition in nondemocratic societies where institutions do not enable political commitments. Each individual is endowed with a level of political power. The ruling coalition consists of a subset of the individuals in the society and decides the distribution of resources. A ruling coalition needs to contain enough powerful members to win against any alternative coalition that may challenge it and it needs to be self-enforcing, in the sense that none of its subcoalitions should be able to secede and become the new ruling coalition. We present both an axiomatic approach that captures these notions and determines a (generically) unique ruling coalition and the analysis of a dynamic game of coalition formation that encompasses these ideas. We establish that the subgame perfect equilibria of the coalition formation game coincide with the set of ruling coalitions resulting from the axiomatic approach. A key insight of our analysis is that a coalition is made self-enforcing by the failure of its winning subcoalitions to be self-enforcing. This is most simply illustrated by the following example: with "majority rule," two-person coalitions are generically not self-enforcing and consequently, three-person coalitions are self-enforcing (unless one player is disproportionately powerful). We also characterize the structure of ruling coalitions. For example, we determine the conditions under which ruling coalitions are robust to small changes in the distribution of power and when they are fragile. We also show that when the distribution of power across individuals is relatively equal and there is majoritarian voting, only certain sizes of coalitions (e.g., with "majority rule," coalitions of size 3, 7, 15, 31, etc.) can be the ruling coalition.
Abstract: A central feature of dynamic collective decision-making is that the rules that govern the procedures for future decision-making and the distribution of political power across players are determined by current decisions. For example, current constitutional change must take into account how the new constitution may pave the way for further changes in laws and regulations. We develop a general framework for the analysis of this class of dynamic problems. Under relatively natural acyclicity assumptions, we provide a complete characterization of dynamically stable states as functions of the initial state and determine conditions for their uniqueness. We show how this framework can be applied in political economy, coalition formation, and the analysis of the dynamics of clubs. The explicit characterization we provide highlights two intuitive features of dynamic collective decision-making: (1) a social arrangement is made stable by the instability of alternative arrangements that are preferred by sufficiently many members of the society; (2) efficiency-enhancing changes are often resisted because of further social changes that they will engender.
Abstract: Why do some non-democratic regimes allow free or partially free media? Free media provide information necessary for creating bureaucratic incentives, but might also help citizens to coordinate on replacing the incumbent ruler. If a country is rich in natural resources, the bureaucratic incentives are less important; hence media freedom is less likely to emerge. Using panel data, we show that controlling for country fixed effects, media are less free in oil-rich economies, with the effect especially pronounced in non-democratic regimes. These results are robust to model specification and the inclusion of various controls, including economic development, democracy, literacy, internet penetration, country size, size of government, and inequality.
Abstract: The winner of a battle for a throne can either execute or spare the loser; if the loser is spared, he contends the throne in the next period. Executing the losing contender gives the winner an additional quiet period, but then his life is at risk if he loses to some future contender who might be, in equilibrium, too frightened to spare him. The trade-off is analyzed within a dynamic complete information game, with, potentially, an infinite number of long-term players. Decisions to execute predecessors are history-dependent. With a dynastic rule in place, incentives to kill the predecessor are much higher than in non-hereditary dictatorships. The historical part of our analytic narrative contains a detailed analysis of two types of non-democratic succession: hereditary rule of the Osmanli dynasty in the Ottoman Empire in 1281-1922, and non-hereditary military dictatorships in Venezuela in 1830-1964.
Abstract: The possibility of treason by a close associate has been a nightmare of most dictators throughout history. Better informed viziers are also better able to discriminate among potential plotters, and this makes them more risky subordinates for the ruler. To avoid this, dictators, especially those which are weak and vulnerable, sacrifice the competence of their agents, hiring mediocre but loyal subordinates. Furthermore, any use of incentive schemes by a dictator is limited by the fact that all punishments are conditional on the dictator's own survival, and a dictator is typically unable to commit to the optimal (i.e., less than capital) punishment for those who unsuccessfully plotted against him. We endogenize loyalty and competence in a principal-agent game between a dictator and his (probably, few) viziers in both static and dynamic settings. The dynamic model allows us to focus on the succession problem that insecure dictators face.
© 2007 by
the President and Fellows of Harvard College