While people in democracies can vote their government out when they are discontent with its policies, those in dictatorships cannot do so. They can only attempt to expel the dictator via mass protests or revolutions. Based on a general cause-and-effect mechanism, the author analyzes whether such...

All rulers face political competition, both from rivals within their state, and from other states to which their subjects may exit. In a simple model, both kinds of competition are substitutes. Internal competition (democracy) benefits citizens by allowing them to replace rent-seeking rulers....

While people in democracies can vote their government out when they are discontent with its policies, those in dictatorships cannot do so. They can only attempt to expel the dictator via mass protests or revolutions. Based on a general cause-and-effect mechanism, the author analyzes whether such...

Direct military rule has become rare in world politics. Today, most military regimes have either given way to some form of democracy or been transformed into another form of authoritarianism. This article formulates an analytical framework for the detachment of militaries from politics and...

All rulers face political competition, both from rivals within their state, andfrom other states to which their subjects may exit. In a simple model, both kinds of competitionare substitutes. Internal competition (democracy) benefits citizens by allowingthem to replace rent-seeking rulers. But...

Mali long seemed a model, low-income democracy. Yet, in a few short weeks in early 2012, more than half of the territory came under the military control of an Islamist secessionist movement, and a military coup deposed the democratically-elected government in the capital. Given the substantial...

This paper evaluates the sustainability of large current account imbalances in the era when the Chinese GDP growth rate and current account/GDP exceed 10%. We investigate the size distribution and the durability of current account deficits during 1966-2005, and report the results of a simulation...

Die internationale Entwicklungszusammenarbeit verfolgt zwei Ziele: Armutsreduzierung und Demokratisierung. Auf der Grundlage eines Rational-Choice-Modells wird gezeigt, dass diese Ziele in einem Konflikt zueinander stehen, wenn Maßnahmen westlicher Entwicklungspolitik in und auf Diktaturen...