Democratization or Repression
By Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson. 2000
151 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Regimes controlled by a rich elite often collapse and make way for democracy amidst widespread social unrest. Such regime changes are often followed by redistribution to the poor at the expense of the former elite. We argue that the reason why the elite may have to resort to full-scale democratization, despite its apparent costs to themselves, may be that lesser concessions would be viewed as a sign of weakness and spur further unrest and more radical demands. The elite may therefore be forced to choose between repression and the most generous concession, a transition to full democracy.
Subfields: Political Science and International Relations
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9b592a5d458971af70a92167e778fdcc972f70f9
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In Political Science and International Relations
Citations in the corpus
- Inequality and Regime Change: Democratic Transitions and the Stability of Democratic Rule (2012, methodology): “How could it be that democracy leads to higher taxes and more education and possibly structural change but has no impact on inequality? )is is an issue that requires a great deal more research than in Acemoglu et al. (2013), but all three of the above mechanisms could be at play.”
- Economic Inequality and Its Socioeconomic Impact (2002, unknown): “Acemoglu and Robinson (2000) document the historical evidence in Europe that the threat of revolution leads to the extension of the franchise (i.e. voting rights).”
- The Political Economy of the Kuznets Curve (2002, unknown): “In related papers (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2000a,c, 2001) we consider how democratization interacts with other instruments such as repression, investigate the determinants of democratic consolidation by endogenizing coups, and enrich the model in several other ways.”