Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Economic and Political Origins
Daron Acemoglu (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and James A. Robinson (Harvard University, Massachusetts)
Hardback (ISBN-10: 0521855268 | ISBN-13: 9780521855266); Published December 2005 540 pages, $35.00.
What forces lead to democracy's creation? Why does it sometimes consolidate only to collapse at other times? Written by two of the foremost authorities on this subject in the world, this volume develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. It revolutionizes scholarship on the factors underlying government and popular movements toward democracy or dictatorship. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political power and resources. Their book, the subject of a four-day seminar at Harvard's Center for Basic Research in the Social Sciences, was also the basis for the Walras-Bowley lecture at the joint meetings of the European Economic Association and Econometric Society in 2003 and is the winner of the John Bates Clark Medal.
Contents
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Part I. Questions and Answers:
1. Paths of political development:
1. Britain;
2. Argentina;
3. Singapore;
4. South Africa,
5. The agenda;
2. Our argument:
1. Democracy vs. nondemocracy;
2. Building blocks of our approach;
3. Towards our basic story;
4. Our theory of democratization;
5. Democratic consolidation;
6. Determinants of democracy;
7. Political identities and the nature of conflict;
8. Democracy in a picture;
9. Overview of the book;
3. What do we know about democracy?:
1. Measuring democracy;
2. Patterns of democracy;
3. Democracy, inequality and redistribution;
4. Crises and democracy;
5. Social unrest and democratization;
6. The literature;
7. Our contribution;
Part II. Modelling Politics:
4. Democratic politics:
1. Introduction;
2. Aggregating individual preferences;
3. Single-peaked preferences and the median voter theorem;
4. Our workhorse models;
5. Democracy and political equality;
6. Conclusion;
5. Nondemocratic politics:
1. Introduction;
2. Power and constraints in nondemocratic politics;
3. Modeling preferences and constraints in nondemocracies;
4. Commitment problems;
5. A simple game of promises;
6. A dynamic model;
7. Incentive compatible promises;
8. Conclusion;
Part III. The Creation and Consolidation of Democracy:
6. Democratization:
1. Introduction;
2. The role of political institutions;
3. Preferences over political institutions;
4. Political power and institutions;
5. A ‘static’ model of democratization;
6. Democratization or repression?
7. A dynamic model of democratization;
8. Subgame perfect equilibria;
9. Alternative political identities;
10. Targeted transfers;
11. Power of the elite in democracy; 1
2. Ideological preferences over regimes;
13. Democratization in pictures;
14. Equilibrium revolutions;
15. Conclusion;
7. Coups and consolidation:
1. Introduction;
2. Incentives for coups;
3. A static model of coups;
4. A dynamic model of the creation and consolidation of democracy;
5. Alternative political identities;
6. Targeted transfers;
7. Power in democracy and coups;
8. Consolidation in a picture;
9. Defensive coups;
10. Conclusion;
Part IV. Putting the Models to Work:
8. The role of the middle class:
1. Introduction;
2. The three-class model;
3. Emergence of partial democracy;
4. From partial to full democracy;
5. Repression: the middle class as a buffer;
6. Repression: soft-liners vs. hard-liners;
7. The role of the middle class in consolidating democracy;
8. Conclusion;
9 Economic structure and democracy:
1. Introduction;
2. Economic structure and income distribution;
3. Political conflict;
4. Capital, land and the transition to democracy;
5. Financial integration;
6. Increased political integration;
7. Alternative assumptions about the nature of international trade;
8. Conclusion;
Part V. Conclusion and The Future of Democracy:
11. Conclusion and the future of democracy:
1. Paths of political development revisited;
2. Extension and areas for future research;
3. The future of democracy;
Part VI. Appendix:
12. Appendix to chapter 4: the distribution of power in democracy:
1. Introduction;
2. Probabilistic voting models;
3. Lobbying;
4. Partisan politics and political capture.
Reviews
"This path-breaking book is among the most ambitious, innovative, sweeping, and rigorous scholarly efforts in comparative political economy and political development. It offers a broad, substantial new account of the creation and consolidation of democracy. Why is the franchise extended? How do elites make reform believable and avoid expropriation? Why do revolutions nevertheless occur? Why do new democracies sometimes collapse into coups and repression? When is repression abandoned? Backed by a unified analytic model, historical insight, and extensive statistical analysis, the authors' case is compelling." James E. Alt, Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government, Harvard University
"This tour de force combines brilliant theoretical imagination and historical breadth to shine new light on issues that have long been central in social science. The book cannot be ignored by anybody wanting to link political and economic development. Its range is truly impressive. The same logical framework offers plausible predictions about revolution, repression, democratization, and coups. The book refreshingly includes as much Latin American experience as European experience, and as much Asian as North American. The authors offer new intellectual life to economics, political science, sociology, and history. Game theory gains a wider audience by being repeatedly applied to major historical issues for which commitment is indeed a key mechanism. Economists and political scientists gain more common ground on their political economy frontier.
Sociologists are given a new template about class interactions in the political sphere, one that suggests both new tests and new ideas. And comparative historians, while fleeing from active involvement in game theory, have a new set of conjectures to support or be provoked by." Peter Lindert, University of California, Davis
"Acemoglu and Robinson have developed a coherent and flexible analytical framework that brings together many aspects of the comparative political economy of democratization and democratic consolidation. Beyond being an excellent work of synthesis, this framework also leads to insights that will pave the way for further theoretical and empirical investigation. The combination of theory and historical application make this a first-rate book for teaching, as well as a major research contribution." Thomas Romer, Princeton University
"This book is an immense achievement. Acemoglu and Robinson at once extend the frontiers of both economics and political science; they provide a new way of understanding why some countries are rich and some are poor; and they reinterpret the last 500 years of history." Barry Weingast, Stanford University
""A vast body of research in social science on the development of democracy offers detailed accounts of specific country events but few general lessons. Acemoglu and Robinson breathe new life into this field. Relying on a sequence of formal but parsimonious game-theoretic models and on penetrating historical analysis, they provide a common understanding of the diverse country histories observed during the last two centuries" - Torsten Persson, Director Institute for International Economics Studies, Stockholm University
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