Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy

Acemoglu, Daron
Daron Acemoglu is Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's Program on Institutions, Organizations, and Growth. He received the 2005 John Bates Clark Medal awarded by the American Economic Association to the best economist working in the United States under age 40. He is the author of the textbook Introduction to Modern Economic Growth and coeditor of Econometrica and NBER Macroannual.Robinson, James A.
James A. Robinson is Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is a Faculty Associate at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and is a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's Program on Institutions, Organizations, and Growth. He is coeditor with Jared Diamond of Natural Experiments in History (2009).

This book develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. Different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political power and resources. Thus democracy is preferred by the majority of citizens, but opposed by elites. Dictatorship nevertheless is not stable when citizens can threaten social disorder and revolution. In response, when the costs of repression are sufficiently high and promises of concessions are not credible, elites may be forced to create democracy. By democratizing, elites credibly transfer political power to the citizens, ensuring social stability. Democracy consolidates when elites do not have strong incentive to overthrow it. These processes depend on (1) the strength of civil society, (2) the structure of political institutions, (3) the nature of political and economic crises, (4) the level of economic inequality, (5) the structure of the economy, and (6) the form and extent of globalization.

This book systematically explains why some countries are democracies while others are not.
This book is the first to use modern social science methodology systematically to explain why some countries are democracies while others are not. Why does democracy sometimes persist and consolidate while other times it collapses? The treatment shows that whether or not a society becomes democratic depends on several factors.

Part I. Questions and Answers; Section 1. Paths of Political Development: 1. Britain; 2. Argentina; 3. Singapore; 4. South Africa, 5. The agenda; Section 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; Section 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; Section 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; Section 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; Section 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; 12. Ideological preferences over regimes; 13. Democratization in pictures; 14. Equilibrium revolutions; 15. Conclusion; Section 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; Section 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; Section 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; Section 10. 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; Section 11. Appendix to Section 4: The Distribution of Power in Democracy: 1. Introduction; 2. Probabilistic voting models; 3. Lobbying; 4. Partisan politics and political capture.