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Do democracies and autocracies behave similarly in international affairs?
- -If the domestic arrangements of a regime are irrelevant to international politics, then the strategic perspective is wrong
- -If democracies and autocracies behave differently in similar circumstances, then structural theories are wrong
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Leaders do not benefit equally from
- from seeking peace and prosperity
- -Democratic leaders find it essential to pursue peace and prosperity, while autocrats do not
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But few democratic leaders last as long in office as
- dictators
- -Democratic leaders average 3.7 years in office while autocrats remain in office an average of 8.6 years
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Every country has
fundamental institutional arrangements or rules
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Selectorate:
- the set of people in a country who have a legal right to participate in the selection of the government leadership
- -The selectorate does not have to involve voting
- -Everyone else is disenfranchised
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Winning Coalition:
those members of the selectorate whose support is essential to the incumbent government
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The sizes of the selectorate and the winning coalition distinguish between different:
regime types
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Regime Types: Small selectorate, small winning coalition:
- -Few people select leader; few needed to retain power
- -Monarchies; military juntas
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Regime Types: Large selectorate, small winning coalition:
- -Large group participates in selection; few needed to retain power
- -Communist systems; rigged-election autocracies
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Regime Types: Large selectorate, large winning coalition:
- -Large numbers participate in selection; a subset (but a large number) required to maintain power
- -Modern democracies
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Political Institutions:
- -Those who get to pick these institutions influence the size of the selectorate and the winning coalition
- -The size of these institutions influences the foreign and domestic performance of the state
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The Logic of Political Survival:
- -All leaders care first about maintaining themselves in office
- -But don’t need to satisfy everyone to do this
- -Just need to do what is necessary to keep those whose support they need to stay in office satisfied
- -A leader has resources with which to accomplish this
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Tools for Staying in Office:
- Leaders stay in office by distributing a mix of private and public goods
- -Private goods: can be limited to a select group of citizens
- -Public goods: benefits enjoyed by all citizens in the state (component of good public policies)
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Tools for Staying in Office: Tradeoff:
- resources spent on public goods/ good public policy cannot be spent on private goods
- -The manner in which these resources are allocated depends on the sizes of the selectorate and the winning coalition
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The Logic of Political Survival:
To stay in office, a leader needs to make sure that members of the winning coalition are receiving greater benefits than they can expect from a rival/challenger
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The Logic of Political Survival:
- -Can keep winning coalition happy by providing the members of “W” with private goods
- -But as the size of “W” increases, the amount of private goods received by each member of “W” decreases
- -At some point, leader has to switch to allocating resources towards public goods
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The Loyalty Norm: not being essential to
new government (and therefore not receiving private goods)
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Defection is
- risky
- -The odds of being in the new winning coalition after defecting is equal to the ratio of size of the winning coalition to the size of the selectorate (W/S)
- -The risk of not being in the new winning coalition increases as the winning coalition gets smaller and the selectorate gets larger
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The ratio _____ is the loyalty norm.
- The ratio (W/S) is the loyalty norm.
- -it captures how loyal a member of the winning coalition will be to the leader
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Ratio of Loyalty Norm:
- -If both W and S are large: members of the winning coalition won’t be very loyal
- -If W is very small and S very large- members of winning coalition will be very loyal
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Winning Coalition Allocation: When W small and S large
- -autocracies, members of W are very loyal to the leader:
- -The leader provides just enough private goods to keep them satisfied
- -Will remain in office longer, even when producing failed policies
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Winning Coalition Allocation: When W large and S large:
- -democracies: members of W not very loyal
- -Leaders have incentives to provide good public policies
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The Selectorate Theory: Evidence:
- -That leaders in democracies have high incentives to provide public goods explains why democracies perform much better than autocracies in many areas:
- -Have higher economic growth, longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, higher literacy rates, higher educational attainment, etc.
- -Also explains differences in foreign policy: Good foreign policy is good public policy
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Economic Policies & Trade: In democracies, leaders have stronger incentives to provide effective economic policies
- -Produces national wealth
- -Higher economic growth
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Economic Policies & Trade: In democracies, leaders have incentives to pursue free trade:
- -Free trade (low tariffs) is a public good; protection is a private good
- -Average tariffs lower in democracies; economic openness higher
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National Survival:
- -Democratic leaders need to pursue policies that are good for the nation as a whole; autocrats do not have this incentive
- -Democracies will be more careful about going to war not likely to get into wars they are likely to lose
- -When democracies do get involved in wars, put more resources into winning the war
- -Explains why democracies win more wars
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The Democratic Peace: Democracies do not fight each other because:
- -They are selective about the wars they get into and they know democracies are hard to defeat (democracies make really bad targets for other democracies)
- -Hence democratic states rarely attack other democratic states (not impossible, just not likely)
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The Democratic Peace: All of the democratic peace regularities are consistent with the
selectorate theory
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The Democratic Peace: There are also novel hypotheses:
- -Democracies try harder in war
- -The political incentives in democracies do not make them immune from wars of imperial expansion
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Foreign Aid:
-Donor countries tend to be wealthy democratic countries
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Variations in domestic political institutions explain a lot about
international relations and domestic politics
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All else being equal, large winning coalition systems create
incentives for leaders to shift public policy away from private benefits and toward the provision of public goods
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