Subjects
Reframing the Guardianship Dilemma: How the Military’s Dual Disloyalty Options Imperil Dictators
Jack Paine
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Dictators confront a guardianship dilemma: military agents are needed to defeat mass outsider movements, but these agents can overthrow the ruler from within. In existing theories, rulers prioritize coup-proofing measures unless they anticipate strong outsider threats. Then dictators prioritize military competence. I reframe the guardianship dilemma around the central idea that militaries can choose between dual disloyalty options. In addition to staging a coup, militaries can defect by not fending off popular uprisings or rebellions. Dictators fear competent militaries not primarily because of their coup threat but instead because they often survive intact following a regime transition. Low motivation for competent militaries to save the ruler undermines their rationale of guarding against outsider threats, even if they pose a low coup threat. Consequently, rulers prioritize competence under narrow circumstances. Only radically oriented outsider movements that pose an existential threat to all regime elites induce loyalty from a competent military.
Diverting domestic turmoil
Ashani Amarasinghe
Journal of Public Economics, April 2022
Abstract:
When faced with intense domestic turmoil, governments may strategically engage in foreign interactions to divert the public’s attention away from pressing domestic issues. I test this hypothesis for a globally representative sample of 190 countries, at the monthly level, over the years 1997–2014. Using high–frequency data on media–reported events, I find robust evidence that governments resort to diversionary strategies in times of domestic turmoil and that such diversion takes the form of verbally aggressive foreign interactions. Diversionary interactions are typically targeted at countries closely linked along cultural and geographic dimensions, and at countries with low levels of state capability. Interestingly, I do not find evidence of these strategies being effective in deterring domestic turmoil. Taken together, these findings provide new insights on governments’ systematic use of verbally aggressive foreign interactions as a short-term, low-cost, low-risk, strategic tool, to divert domestic turmoil.
Televising Justice during War
Stephen Stapleton, Andres Uribe & Austin Wright
Journal of Conflict Resolution, April 2022, Pages 529-552
Abstract:
Television is an overlooked tool of state building. We estimate the impact of televising criminal proceedings on public use of government courts to resolve disputes. We draw on survey data from Afghanistan, where the government used television as a mechanism for enhancing the legitimacy of formal legal institutions during an ongoing conflict. We find consistent evidence of enhanced support for government courts among survey respondents who trust television following the nation’s first televised criminal trial. We find no evidence that public confidence in other government functions (e.g. economy, development, corruption) improved during this period. Our findings suggest that television may provide a means of building state legitimacy during war and other contexts of competition between political authorities.
Politicians' In-Utero Health Shocks, Human Capital, Preferences, and Career and Governance Outcomes: The Case of City Party Secretaries in China
Xiangyu Shi
Yale Working Paper, March 2022
Abstract:
In this paper, I provide an empirical and theoretical analysis on whether and how in-utero negative health shocks affect politicians' human capital and career and governance outcomes, using Chinese Great Famine (1959-1961) and Chinese city Party Secretaries as a case in point. Using a difference-in-differences empirical strategy, I document the fact that city Party Secretaries who are exposed to more severe famine in utero have significantly worse career and governance outcomes. I build an endogenous growth model with self-interested politicians to rationalize the facts, and estimate the model to quantify the effects of famine exposure on politicians' human capital and preference.
Frightened Mandarins: The Adverse Effects of Fighting Corruption on Local Bureaucracy
Erik Wang
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Canonical theories of bureaucracy demonstrate the need for enhanced monitoring in government hierarchies. I argue that intensive top-down monitoring may reduce the productivity of bureaucrats by frightening them away from the informal practices that they would otherwise rely on when completing daily tasks. Utilizing a unique dataset of sub-provincial inspections in China’s recent anti-corruption campaign, I identify this “chilling effect” by exploiting variation in the timing of inspections from 2012 to 2017. I show that these anti-corruption activities lower the area of land development projects proposed by bureaucrats. Causal mediation analyses with investigation data and original measures of corruption potential reveal that these effects are unlikely driven by reduction of actual corruption. Extension analyses suggest similar consequences on revenue collection and environmental regulation. Although scholars of state-building equate low corruption with effective bureaucracy, these findings present a paradox where intensive state-led efforts to lower corruption may further undermine bureaucrats’ productivity.
State-Evading Solutions to Violence: Organized Crime and Governance in Indigenous Mexico
Beatriz Magaloni, Kristóf Gosztonyi & Sarah Thompson
Stanford Working Paper, January 2022
Abstract:
The monopoly of violence in the hands of the state is conceived as the principal vehicle to generate order. A problem with this vision is that parts of the state and its law enforcement apparatus often become extensions of criminality rather than solutions to it. We argue that one solution to this dilemma is to "opt out from the state." Using a multi-method strategy combining extensive qualitative research, quasi-experimental statistical analyses, and survey data, the paper demonstrates that indigenous communities in Mexico are better able to escape predatory criminal rule when they are legally allowed to carve a space of autonomy from the state through the institution of "usos y costumbres." We demonstrate that these municipalities are more immune to violence than similar localities where regular police forces and local judiciaries are in charge of law enforcement and where mayors are elected through multiparty elections rather than customary practices.
Stalin and the origins of mistrust
Milena Nikolova, Olga Popova & Vladimir Otrachshenko
Journal of Public Economics, April 2022
Abstract:
We examine current differences in trust levels within the countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU) and trace their origins back to the system of forced labor during Stalin, which was marked by high incarceration rates and harsh punishments. We explore whether those exposed to knowledge about the repressions became less trusting and transferred this social norm to future generations and communities. We argue that political repressions were more salient and visible to local communities living near forced labor camps (gulags), which symbolized the harshness of Stalin’s regime. Combining contemporary survey data with the geolocation of forced labor camps, we find that living near former gulags lowers present-day social trust and civic engagement. These effects are independent of living near places where Stalin’s victims were arrested. Moreover, they are above and beyond any experiences with war or civil conflict that the extant literature documents, indicating that the gulag system's repressiveness is a crucial trigger of the mistrust culture within the FSU countries today. As such, we furnish novel evidence on how past political repression matters for current socioeconomic outcomes.
On war and political radicalization: Evidence from forced conscription into the Wehrmacht
Stephanos Vlachos
European Economic Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper investigates when and how political preferences that were shaped by conflict express themselves into electoral outcomes. During World War II, the Third Reich annexed the French eastern borderlands and forcibly conscripted their inhabitants into the Wehrmacht. While conscription was introduced in both annexed regions, the administrators’ independence gave them broad discretion on how to apply the policy. As a result, different birth cohorts were drafted in different regions. I show that individuals conscripted and their descendants display reduced levels of political trust. This attitude is not reflected into aggregate municipal electoral outcomes at once. It translates into voting only with the emergence of parties that are large enough and radical enough. In the absence of parties that fulfill both conditions, these preferences lead to higher abstention.
Brewing Violence: Foreign Investment and Civil Conflict
Pablo Pinto & Boliang Zhu
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two prominent features in current world affairs are the unprecedented level of global economic integration and the growing incidence of intrastate violence. We develop and test a novel argument linking global integration through foreign investment to intrastate armed conflict. The presence of multinational corporations in developing countries can cause market concentration, resulting in high rents. Disputes between governments and would-be challengers over the appropriation of these rents are likely to turn violent, increasing the incidence of armed conflict. State capacity mitigates this positive association between foreign investment and intrastate war. Strong states have the capacity to deter rebellions, address citizens’ demands through institutionalized mechanisms, and credibly commit to the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Using data from developing countries for over four decades and addressing potential endogeneity and selection biases, we find strong support for our hypotheses. Our findings have important implications for understanding the link between economic interdependence and conflict.
Corporate Sovereign Awakening and the Making of Modern State Sovereignty: New Archival Evidence from the English East India Company
Swati Srivastava
International Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
The English East India Company's “company-state” lasted 274 years — longer than most states. This research note uses new archival evidence to study the Company as a catalyst in the development of modern state sovereignty. Drawing on the records of 16,740 managerial and shareholder meetings between 1678 and 1795, I find that as the Company grew through wars, its claim to sovereign authority shifted from a privilege delegated by Crown and Parliament to a self-possessed right. This “sovereign awakening” sparked a reckoning within the English state, which had thus far tolerated ambiguity in Company sovereignty based on the early modern shared international understanding of divisible, nonhierarchical layered sovereignty. But self-possessed nonstate sovereignty claimed from the core of the state became too much. State actors responded by anchoring sovereign authority along more hierarchical, indivisible foundations espoused by theorists centuries earlier. The new research makes two contributions. First, it introduces the conceptual dynamic of “war awakens sovereigns” (beyond making states) by entangling entities in peacemaking to defend sovereign claims. Second, it extends arguments about the European switch from layered sovereignty to hierarchical statist forms by situating the Company's sovereign evolution in this transformation. Ultimately, this study enables fuller historicization of both nonstate authority and the social construction of sovereignty in international politics.
Democratic constraints and adherence to the classical gold standard
Bert Kramer & Petros Milionis
Explorations in Economic History, April 2022
Abstract:
We study how political institutions affected the decision of countries to adhere to the classical gold standard. Using a variety of econometric techniques and controlling for a wide range of relevant economic and political factors, we find that the probability of adherence to the gold standard before World War I was ceteris paribus lower for countries which were more democratic. This effect can be linked to how open the political process was to different segments of the population and the extent of political competition resulting from that. The effect was particularly relevant for peripheral countries and it influenced both the decision of countries to adopt the gold standard as well as the decision to suspend it.
The value of political connections: Evidence from China's anti-corruption campaign
Marta Alonso, Nuno Palma & Beatriz Simon-Yarza
Journal of Institutional Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the value of the political connections of directors on Chinese boards. We build a new dataset that measures connections of directors to members of the Politburo via past school ties, and find that private firms with politically connected directors in the boardroom get on average about 16% higher subsidies over sales per firm (7 million yuan). Connected state-owned enterprises (SOEs) access debt at 11% cheaper cost, which translates into average savings of close to 32 million yuan per firm in lower interest payments. We find that the value of the political connections persisted after the anti-corruption campaign (ACC) of 2012. It became weaker for the cost of debt in SOEs, but stronger for subsidies to private firms. We argue that the value of connections in the private sector increased after the ACC because they became a less risky alternative to corruption. We also show that connected firms do not perform better.