|
The Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Award is awarded annually for the best paper presented at the previous year's annual meeting. Supported by Pi Sigma Alpha. Award Committee: Fredrick C. Harris, Columbia University, Chair; Lawrie Balfour, University of Virginia; and William T. Bernhard, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Title: “Political Survival and Endogenous Institutional Change” Citation: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith’s paper “Political Survival and Endogenous Institutional Change” addresses an important question in comparative politics about regime choice: when will authoritarian countries democratize and when will they turn to more repression? Classic works by Barrington Moore and Sam Huntington to more recent works by Charles Boix has tacked this question. The paper makes a contribution in a number of ways. First, it recognizes that regime change is not unidirectional and seeks to account for both movements toward and away from democracy. Second, the analysis extends the simple strategic choice models common in the literature on democratization. The model involves a wider menu of choices than simply repression and liberalization. It shows how the starting conditions can provide incentives for leaders to choose different paths in the face of similar stimuli. In addition to addressing an important question, the authors deploy a unique methodological approach, developing both a formal model and an empirical model to assess their claims. The use of the formal model highlights a number of different mechanisms and produces a set of conditional hypotheses about the impact of revolutionary threat, resources, and institutional change. This is an important and wide-ranging study. At its core, this paper builds on the idea that politics is coalition building. By adding some institutional features to coalition models, it extends the classic work of William Riker and others. It helps us think about how leaders can form and build coalitions under different types of political and economic constraints. |
Join/Renew Now!
Contribute
Contact APSA