Concession, Democratization and Repression in the Face of Revolutionary Threats

• In Event: Political Transitions

Abstract

Abstract

This paper tries to address the questions of why political transitions and revolutions happen at certain societies at specific junctures of history, while other societies with similar levels of social, economic and political development do not experience a political transition and continue with the status quo. This paper includes a baseline complete information model of regime change in the line of Acemoglu and Robinson (2001, 2006) class of models, followed by an extension to the case of incomplete information. We develop a dynamic sequential game of political regime change and democratization and focus on the elite side of society which makes it possible for us to derive the conditions for the cases of democratization, concession, suppression, or otherwise a voluntary revolution in a society. Further, in the extension part of the paper, we introduce uncertainty over the repression cost which makes our model different from the existing literature by simultaneously considering a continuous type space and a multi-stage game. Our models allows for the dynamic interaction between elite and citizens and how the dynamics between revolution and repression plays out. Further, our models account for the deep parameters of society such as the demographic composition of society and the income inequality between the poor and rich groups, which is mostly absent in similar incomplete information models.

The comparative statics of our model enable us to specify some favorable parameter conditions for each type of political transition. Our model implies that democratization is more likely in a society in which both the inter-group inequality and deadweight loss cost of taxation is high in a society. Cooperative autocracy is more like in societies in which both inter-group inequality and deadweight loss cost of taxation cost is low. A post-revolutionary society is more likely when inequality is high, and the deadweight loss cost of taxation is high both under autocracy and democracy. Moreover, repression is more likely when the cost of repression to the elite is sufficiently low, where the elite do not democratize nor offer any concession and can preserve the status-quo at no cost.

Further, the comparative statics and predictions of our model yield some important and interesting insights as to the recent and historical real world cases of revolutions. One such interesting insight is regarding the role of Inequality and concessions on the prospects for a revolutionary regime change. Some empirical studies show that in the context of Arab Spring some redistributive policies and transfers made out of oil rents may have sustained some regimes of the MENA through an authoritarian bargain while other countries who couldn’t sustain this redistributive social contract experienced large waves of destabilizing protests. This observation conforms to the comparative statics of our model with respect to inequality that suggests the inequality reducing channel of highly distributive policies may be one of the reasons that the oil-rich countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia did not experience any severe wave of Arab Spring protests, while countries like Egypt and Tunisia were affected by revolutionary protests and regime change. Further, going a bit further back in history, the French Revolution is another important case which confirms to the insights from our model. The historical accounts of the event show that the France ancien regime was characterized by a high degree of inequality and a regressive taxation system which served to increase inequality, which also conforms to the implication of our model that prevalence of higher inequality in a society increases the prospects for a successful revolution.


References

Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J. A. (2001). A theory of political transitions. American Economic Review, 91(4), 938-963.

Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J. A. (2006). Economic origins of dictatorship and democracy. Cambridge University Press.

Author

• Tariq Basir, University of Pittsburgh