Kleptocracy and Divide-and-Rule: A Model of Personal Rule

By Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson, Thierry Verdier. 2004

610 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Many developing countries have suffered under the personal rule of kleptocrats, who implement highly inefficient economic policies, expropriate the wealth of their citizens, and use the proceeds for their own glorification or consumption. We argue that the success of kleptocrats rests, in part, on their ability to use a divide-and-rule strategy, made possible by the weakness of institutions in these societies. Members of society need to cooperate in order to depose a kleptocrat, yet such cooperation may be defused by imposing punitive rates of taxation on any citizen who proposes such a move, and redistributing the benefits to those who need to agree to it. Thus the collective action problem can be intensified by threats which remain off the equilibrium path. In equilibrium, all are exploited and no one challenges the kleptocrat. Kleptocratic policies are more likely when foreign aid and rents from natural resources provide rulers with substantial resources to buy off opponents; when opposition groups are shortsighted; when the average productivity in the economy is low; and when there is greater inequality between producer groups (because more productive groups are more difficult to buy off). (JEL: O12, H00) Copyright (c) 2004 The European Economic Association.

Subfields: Demography, Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c930c73bba44a5cd06fefdd1e41c4895ec3adc04

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Citations in the corpus

•FDI from the South: The role of institutional distance and natural resources (2013, background): “…are low), increase incentives for corruption, as well as discourage the introduction of better institutions, because they would erode the political advantage and future rents of the incumbents (Acemoglu et al., 2004; Acemoglu and Robinson, 2006; Ades and Di Tella, 1999; Robinson et al., 2006).”
Political foundations of the resource curse (2006, background): “In reality, and particularly in developing countries, politicians seems to have quite a large amount of autonomy from interest groups (see Acemoglu et al., 2004).”
Coalition Formation in Non-Democracies (2008, neutral): “The term weakly-institutionalized polities is introduced in Acemoglu, Robinson, and Verdier (2004) to describe societies in which institutional rules do not constrain political interactions among various social groups or factions. coalition according to their powers).”
Why do some resource-abundant countries succeed while others do not? (2009, background): “Furthermore, and as discussed in Acemoglu et al. (2004), greater resource rents make it easier for dictators to buy off political challengers.”
Investment without Democracy: Ruling-Party Institutionalization and Credible Commitment in Autocracies (2011, background): “During the Cultural Revolution, Mao, in a variant of the divide-and-rule strategy that others analyze (e.g., Acemoglu et al., 2004; Guriev and Sonin, 2009), used the Red Guards, whom he directly controlled and which lay outside the party hierarchy, to attack his opponents within the party.”
Oil and political survival (2013, methodology): “4As in, e.g., Acemoglu et al. (2004; 2010), and Caselli (2006).”
Resource Windfalls, Political Regimes, and Political Stability (2016, neutral): “Besley and Persson (2011), Lei and Michaels (2014), Cotet and Tsui (2013), Dube and Vargas (2013), among others, have looked at resource windfalls and civil war/political violence; Deaton and Miller (1995) and Andersen and Aslaksen (2013) at incumbents’ survival; Egorov et al.”
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (2012, background): “Nonetheless, perhaps more evidence-based academic work by the authors of this book could offset this shortcoming (e.g. Acemoglu et al., 2002; Acemoglu et al., 2004; Acemoglu and Robinson, 2006).”
Leader Behavior and the Natural Resource Curse (2009, background): “Acemoglu et al. (2004) explicitly argue that states intentionally prevent development because of fear of losing power. Dunning (2005) gives some conditions under which the elite fail to invest in diversification, for fear that it will raise the probability of a revolt, and applies this model to the ”
Coal Mining and the Resource Curse in the Eastern United States (2015, neutral): “…poor institutional quality is a necessary precondition for resource abundance to retard economic growth, while Isham et al. (2005), Bulte et al. (2005), Robinson, Torvik, and Verdier (2006), Acemoglu et al. (2003), and Collier (2010) find that resource abundance may also cause poor institutions.”
Oil, Nontax Revenue, and the Redistributional Foundations of Regime Stability (2009, neutral): “Acemoglu, et al., 2004; Anderson, 1995; Bazresch and Levy, 1991; Chaudhry, 1997; Crystal,”