The Experts below are selected from a list of 12144 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Asger Moll Wingender - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Irrigation and Autocracy
Journal of the European Economic Association, 2017Co-Authors: Jeanet Sinding Bentzen, Nicolai Kaarsen, Asger Moll WingenderAbstract:We show that societies with a history of irrigation-based agriculture have been less likely to adopt democracy than societies with a history of rain fed agriculture. Rather than actual irrigation, the empirical analysis is based on how much irrigation potentially can increase yields. Irrigation potential is derived from a range of exogenous geographic factors, and reverse causality is therefore ruled out. Our results hold both at the cross-country level, and at the subnational level in premodern societies surveyed by ethnographers.
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irrigation and Autocracy
Journal of the European Economic Association, 2016Co-Authors: Jeanet Sinding Bentzen, Nicolai Kaarsen, Asger Moll WingenderAbstract:Irrigated agriculture makes societies more likely to be ruled by authoritarian regimes. Ancient societies have long been thought to follow this pattern. We empirically show that irrigation affects political regimes even in the present. To avoid endogeneity, we use geographical and climatic variation to identify irrigation dependent societies. We find that countries whose agriculture depended on irrigation are about six points less democratic on the 21-point polity2 scale than countries where agriculture has been rainfed. We find qualitatively similar results across regions within countries. We argue that the effect has historical origins: irrigation allowed landed elites in arid areas to monopolize water and arable land. This made elites more powerful and better able to oppose democratization. Consistent with this conjecture, we show that irrigation dependence predicts land inequality both at the country level, and in premodern societies surveyed by ethnographers.
Jeanet Sinding Bentzen - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Irrigation and Autocracy
Journal of the European Economic Association, 2017Co-Authors: Jeanet Sinding Bentzen, Nicolai Kaarsen, Asger Moll WingenderAbstract:We show that societies with a history of irrigation-based agriculture have been less likely to adopt democracy than societies with a history of rain fed agriculture. Rather than actual irrigation, the empirical analysis is based on how much irrigation potentially can increase yields. Irrigation potential is derived from a range of exogenous geographic factors, and reverse causality is therefore ruled out. Our results hold both at the cross-country level, and at the subnational level in premodern societies surveyed by ethnographers.
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irrigation and Autocracy
Journal of the European Economic Association, 2016Co-Authors: Jeanet Sinding Bentzen, Nicolai Kaarsen, Asger Moll WingenderAbstract:Irrigated agriculture makes societies more likely to be ruled by authoritarian regimes. Ancient societies have long been thought to follow this pattern. We empirically show that irrigation affects political regimes even in the present. To avoid endogeneity, we use geographical and climatic variation to identify irrigation dependent societies. We find that countries whose agriculture depended on irrigation are about six points less democratic on the 21-point polity2 scale than countries where agriculture has been rainfed. We find qualitatively similar results across regions within countries. We argue that the effect has historical origins: irrigation allowed landed elites in arid areas to monopolize water and arable land. This made elites more powerful and better able to oppose democratization. Consistent with this conjecture, we show that irrigation dependence predicts land inequality both at the country level, and in premodern societies surveyed by ethnographers.
Nicolai Kaarsen - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Irrigation and Autocracy
Journal of the European Economic Association, 2017Co-Authors: Jeanet Sinding Bentzen, Nicolai Kaarsen, Asger Moll WingenderAbstract:We show that societies with a history of irrigation-based agriculture have been less likely to adopt democracy than societies with a history of rain fed agriculture. Rather than actual irrigation, the empirical analysis is based on how much irrigation potentially can increase yields. Irrigation potential is derived from a range of exogenous geographic factors, and reverse causality is therefore ruled out. Our results hold both at the cross-country level, and at the subnational level in premodern societies surveyed by ethnographers.
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irrigation and Autocracy
Journal of the European Economic Association, 2016Co-Authors: Jeanet Sinding Bentzen, Nicolai Kaarsen, Asger Moll WingenderAbstract:Irrigated agriculture makes societies more likely to be ruled by authoritarian regimes. Ancient societies have long been thought to follow this pattern. We empirically show that irrigation affects political regimes even in the present. To avoid endogeneity, we use geographical and climatic variation to identify irrigation dependent societies. We find that countries whose agriculture depended on irrigation are about six points less democratic on the 21-point polity2 scale than countries where agriculture has been rainfed. We find qualitatively similar results across regions within countries. We argue that the effect has historical origins: irrigation allowed landed elites in arid areas to monopolize water and arable land. This made elites more powerful and better able to oppose democratization. Consistent with this conjecture, we show that irrigation dependence predicts land inequality both at the country level, and in premodern societies surveyed by ethnographers.
Daniel Treisman - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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A theory of informational Autocracy
Journal of Public Economics, 2020Co-Authors: Sergei Guriev, Daniel TreismanAbstract:Abstract We develop an informational theory of Autocracy. Dictators survive not by means of force or ideology but because they convince the public—rightly or wrongly—that they are competent. Citizens do not observe the leader's type but infer it from signals in their living standards, state propaganda, and messages sent by an informed elite via independent media. If citizens conclude that the leader is incompetent, they overthrow him. The dictator can invest in making convincing state propaganda, censoring independent media, co-opting the elite, or equipping police to repress attempted uprisings—but he must finance such spending at the expense of the public's consumption. We show that informational autocracies prevail over old-style, overtly violent dictatorships when the informed elite is sufficiently large but are replaced by democracies when elites are too numerous to be bribed or censored. The theory provides insight into various soft authoritarian regimes around the world and suggests a logic of modernization behind recent global political trends.
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A Theory of Informational Autocracy
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2019Co-Authors: Sergei Guriev, Daniel TreismanAbstract:We develop an informational theory of modern Autocracy. Dictators survive not by means of force or ideology but because they convince the public - rightly or wrongly - that they are competent. Citizens do not observe the dictator's type but infer it from signals in their living standards, state propaganda, and messages sent by an informed elite via independent media. If citizens conclude that the dictator is incompetent, they overthrow him in a revolution. The dictator can invest in making convincing state propaganda, censoring independent media, co- opting the elite, or equipping police to repress attempted uprisings but he must finance such spending at the expense of the public's consumption. We show that informational autocracies prevail over old-style, overtly violent dictatorships when the informed elite is sufficiently large but are replaced by democracies when elites are too numerous to be bribed or silenced.
Henry E. Hale - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Regime Cycles: Democracy, Autocracy, and Revolution in Post-Soviet Eurasia
World Politics, 2005Co-Authors: Henry E. HaleAbstract:Research on regime change has often wound up chasing events in the post-Soviet world because it has frequently assumed that regime change, if not simple instability, implies a trajectory toward a regime-type endpoint like democracy or Autocracy. A supplemental approach recognizes that regime change can be cyclic, not just progressive, regressive, or random. In fact, regime cycles are much of what we see in the postcommunist world, where some states have oscillated from Autocracy toward greater democracy, then back toward more Autocracy, and, with recent “colored revolutions,” toward greater democracy again. An institutional logic of elite collective action, focusing on the effects of patronalpresidentialism, is shown to be useful in understanding such cyclic dynamics, explaining why “revolutions” occurred between 2003 and 2005 in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan but not in countries like Russia, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan.
