solving dictator commitment problem
Formal Institutions as Monitoring Devices
When the party controls access to office – including the leader position itself – the dictator has good reasons to fulfill his promises, because he can be removed from office
svolik (2012) two monitoring mechanisms
- Transparency through Regular Interaction
- prevents misperceptions about the dictator’s intentions and actions that could escalate into conflict. - Detection of Non-Compliance
- Formal institutional rules about membership, jurisdiction, protocol and decision making , violations are more easily detected than under informal arrangements.
to ensure detection:
- must also be a credible threat to replace him
- The power of institutions to alleviate credible committment issues relies on the balance of power between the allies and the dictator.
Ruling a country involves several important problems:
→ Implementing the policy decided by the ruling elite
→ Monitoring of local officials to ensure their cooperation
→ Gathering accurate information about opposition
To solve some of their problems to the outside world..
establish seemingly democratic institutions, such as parties, legislatures and mass elections that engage citizens for support
When studying a table, look for:
*s (astericks) → tells us if the figure is significant
Positive or negative figure (greater than or smaller than 1, there are not always negative signs (-))
The size of the figure
Why Are There Elections in Autocracies?
- signal of dictators strength
- strongest signals of regime strength
- show that the dictatorship has the resources and organizational capacity to ensure mass voting - incentives for party officials
- extend their patron–client and information-gathering networks to the grassroots, which helps authoritarian regimes to survive.
- Ruling-party candidates face real competition –> puts pressure on to distribute benefits
ultimately, solves the principal-agent problem between the regime leaders and party officials when monitoring is expensive or impossible
Single-candidate or Single-list Elections
- No choice at all.
Semi-competitive Electoral Systems (aka Electoral Authoritarianism or Competitive Authoritarianism)
61%
Permit some opposition parties to compete
→ but use control of the media, interference with opposition campaigning, fraud, violence, and large-scale state spending to bias outcomes.
support for military dictatorships
led by junior officers should create more support parties than those led by higherranked officers.
dictatorships that create a new support party are more likely to:
- establish new paramilitary forces
- control internal security services
