This paper explores the relevance of soft budget constraints (SBC) to development studies by examining the parastatal sector. The political ingredient of the SBC is discussed by focusing on two examples: 1) religious and military foundations in Iran; and 2) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It...

We hypothesize that, in certain regime types, winning coalitions have an incentive for helping a deprived population solving the collective action problem that may otherwise restrain them in revolting against an incumbent. Recent selectorate literature holds that members of a winning coalition...

We assess Gordon Tullock's work on dictatorship and revolutions using a common analytic framework that captures the dynamics of mutually reinforcing perceptions within a potentially rebelling subgroup of a population. We can reconstruct all of Tullock's central findings but we also find him...

Why do sudden and massive social, economic, and political changes occur when and where they do? Are there institutional preconditions that encourage such changes when present and discourage such changes when absent? I employ a general model which suggests that cascades which induce massive...

This paper models the trade-off between production and appropriation in the presence of simultaneous inter- and intra-group conflicts. The model exhibits a 'group cohesion effect': if the contest between the groups becomes more decisive, or contractual incompleteness between groups becomes more...

This paper discusses various ways to organise these consultations, so that a compromise agreement is reached on the solution of the (re)distribution problem. These institutionalised structures of consultation are referred to as 'matching zones' here. Practical experiences, mainly from the...

Will autocratic governments implement policies to satisfy the people’s demands in order to prevent large scale social unrest? This paper explores this question through quantitatively analysis of the political economy of public goods provision in Chinese provinces. I collected data on the...

We show the existence of a diffusion process of military dictatorships in Sub-Saharan Africa from 1972 through 2007, using panel data probit estimation and a Markov chain transition model. This process is shortly-lived, since we observe an overall trend that reduces the number of military...

Do the citizens have a role in constraining policies in autocratic governments? Usually the political and economic literature model autocracy as if the citizens have no role in constraining leader’s behavior, but actually autocratic government are afraid of possible citizens’ revolts. In...

The purpose of this paper is to explore the joint work of two mechanisms that might constrain autocratic rulers: the threat of a coup by the political elite and of a revolution by the citizens. Our results will help explain a well-established and crucial fact, that is, that autocracies are far...