L2: Democracy and Autocracy Flashcards
Views of democracy
- Procedure-based (minimal view)
- Outcome-based (maximal view)
Levels of Polyarchy
- Level of inclusion: Who among the governed get to participate in the political process, and how much?
- Level of contestation: How easy is it for those who get to participate to organize themselves into competing blocs, each of which has a viable chance of winning power?
Definition of Polyarchy (Dahl)
a form of government in which power is invested in multiple people.
Factors of Level of inclusion
- Low voting age requirements
- Lenient citizenship requirements
- No property requirements
- No restrictions on convicted felons
- No gender and minority group restrictions
- Few ballot access or registration restrictions
Factors of Level of contestation
- Freedom of speech
- Freedom of assembly
- Independent press
- Ability to form political parties
- Absence of (legal or illegal) opposition-suppressing practices or institutions (e.g., beating up opponents, gerrymandering)
Measures of Democracy and Autocracy
- Polity IV (minimalist approach)
- Freedom House (maximalist approach)
Polity IV components
- Regulation of chief executive recruitment
- Competitiveness of executive recruitment
- Openness of chief executive recruitment
- Executive constraints: Are chief executives constrained in their decision making by other institutional actors (military, party apparatus, judiciary, legislature)?
- Regulation of participation: Are there rules on when, whether, and how political preferences are expressed?
- Competitiveness of participation: May opposition compete for leadership positions?
Freedom House Components
1- Political rights
• Electoral process (free and fair?)
• Political pluralism and participation (freedom to form and join parties? viable opposition?)
• Functioning of government (transparency, corruption, accountability?)
2- Civil rights
• Freedom of expression and belief
• Associational and organizational rights
• Rule of law
• Personal autonomy and individual rights
Varieties of Autocracy
- Totalitarianism
- Authoritarianism
-Modern approach: classify autocratic regimes based on institutional design:
Based on executive selection
Based on competitiveness of elections
Characteristics of Totalitarianism
- No political pluralism
- No social and economic pluralism
- Elaborate ideology with “reachable utopia”’
- Extensive mobilization, mandatory organizations, hostile to private life
- Charismatic leadership with undefined limits and unpredictability
Characteristics of Authoritarianism
- Limited political pluralism
- Extensive social and economic pluralism
- “Distinctive mentality” but no elaborate ideology
- Not much mobilization
- Ill-defined leadership; co-optation, rather than elimination, of pre-existing elite
Autocracies based on executive selection
- Military dictatorships (C & S America in 1970s)
- Single-party dictatorships (Mexico before 2000, China 1949–present)
- Personalist dictatorships (Castro’s Cuba, Idi Amin in Uganda)
Autocracies based on competitiveness of elections
Democratic regimes:
• Executives and legislatures chosen through elections that are open, free, and fair (high contestation)
- Most adults have the right to vote (high inclusion)
- Extensive political rights and civil liberties
• No significant interference by non-elected officials (e.g., military, church)
Competitive authoritarian regimes:
- Lacking some or all of the traits above;
- Incumbent suppression of opposition through abuses of state power (jailing opposition)
- Biased media coverage
but incumbents also not so powerful that they can completely eliminate opposition
Differences in Performance:
Economic Argument for Democracy (Olson 1993)
- Lower taxation results in growth
- Rule of Law and stable property rights leading to growth (long-term view citizens)
Differences in Performance:
Economic Argument for Democracy (Olson 1993) story time
First, there is the state of nature: anarchy and roving banditry, where little is produced and later, stolen.
Then, ‘first blessing of the invisible hand’: replace anarchy by government, where the theft is the ruler. Stealing a little at a time through taxation, over a long period, they earn more. Citizens keep more surplus after theft, which they invest in production as they are aware of amount and timing of future tax/ theft.
However, ‘grasping hand’ issue: incentive to extract the maximum possible surplus from the whole society and to use it for his own purpose, thanks to his power monopoly.
The ruler won’t be completely predatory:
- Incentives to provide public goods (to increase production)
- to not set the tax rate so high that he discourages citizen incentives to produce
Autocrats have incentives to set tax rate at “revenue maximizing” rate — the point at which a higher rate would cause such a loss in productivity that the tax revenues for autocrat fall.
In democracies, citizen majority has incentive to set taxes at somewhat lower rate:
- Autocrats’ revenue = taxation
- Citizens’ revenue = taxation (as public goods) + reinvestment of their remaining post-tax earnings (which get larger as taxes get lower).
Economic Argument against Democracy (Melter-Richard Model)
- Each citizen must pay portion of income as tax (t)
- Democratic government redistributes tax revenue equally to
all citizens - Because tax is function of income, but benefits equally shared, citizens with above-average income are net contributors to tax system, while below-average earners are net beneficiaries
- The latter group want higher tax rate, while former group wants lower tax rate
- Dictatorships give disproportionate influence to above-average earners (elites)
- Democracy allows the poor (who are numerous) to have greater influence because leaders need larger support coalitions
- Thus, higher tax rates because poor want greater transfers
- Rich (assumed to also be more productive with higher skills) exert less effort, hindering economic growth
Criticisms of the Melter-Richard Model
- Low participation of the poor (turnout, financial contributions)
- Structural dependence of the state on capitalism (higher taxation → less investment of labor and/or capital)
Empirical Evidence on the performance of democracy
Rule of law and stable property rights are important to growth, but democracy is not necessary nor sufficient to create such conditions.
Selectorate Theory (Bueno de Mesquita, Smith, Siveron, and Morrow 2003), Components
- Leader motivated by desire to gain and maintain office
- Selectorate (S): Subset of population that gets to decide who the leader is (large in democracies, and in dictatorships with elections; small in monarchies, military dictatorships)
- Winning Coalition (W): Subset of selectorate whose support is necessary and sufficient for leader to stay in power (large in democracies, small in all types of dictatorships)
Selectorate Theory (Bueno de Mesquita, Smith, Siveron, and Morrow 2003) story time
- To keep W satisfied, leader distributes private goods, public goods, or both
- Leader also chooses tax rate, which provides revenue, and affects incentives to produce
- Challenger offers alternative mix of goods and tax rate in order to become leader
- Meanwhile, members of W contemplating defection to challenger face risk of not being in the challenger’s winning coalition
Selectorate Theory, risk ratio for W
W= W/S, probability of being a member of the S challenger’s winning coalition if he succeeds in becoming leader
• Small W/S means that member of W is likely to be very loyal to S the current leader (strong loyalty norm)
• Large W/S means that member of W is not likely to be loyal to S the current leader (weak loyalty norm)
Poor Performers in a Selectorate Theory
If W/S is small and the size of W is small (e.g., in a dictatorship with rigged elections), leaders can distribute a few private goods to W, and keep the rest for himself; tax rate can be very high since not that many private goods are needed.
Good Performers in a Selectorate Theory
If W/S is large and the size of W is large (e.g., in a democracy), leaders have to distribute public goods (as targeted private goods to such a large population is infeasible); tax rate must also be low since this is expensive and requires population to be productive.
Middling Performers in a Selectorate Theory
- If W/S is large and the size of W is small (e.g., in a monarch), leaders distribute lots of private goods (since members of W are not loyal); tax rate must also be low since this is expensive and requires population to be productive.
