The Logic of Political Survival

“…by their control over leaders, they should result in lower inequality (Meltzer and Richards 1981; Przeworski 1990), better provision of public goods (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; Lake and Baum 2001), greater involvement in trade agreements (Mansfield et al. 2002), and the avoidance of…”

“As in Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) we assume that for a dictator to survive politically he must capture the support of what they term the winning coalition—a critical mass of people smaller than under democratic elections.”

“7 Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003.”

“…applied to decisions such as conflict initiation and continuation (Fearon, 1994; Downs & Rocke, 1994; Leeds & Davis, 1997; Schultz, 2001b; Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003; Colaresi, 2004; Mansfield & Snyder, 2005; Horowitz, McDermott & Stam, 2005; Lai & Slater, 2006), impose or comply with…”

“For example, Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) analyze political institutions based on how long their leaders survive in office.”

“While our model of an authoritarian polity shares some features with Bueno de Mesquita et al.’s (2003) selectorate theory (see also Besley and Kudamatsu 2007; Haber 2007; Pepinsky 2009), we differ from most existing research in our explicit focus on the collective action problem that the dictator’s allies face when st…”

“First, military expenditures and employment can enhance the repressive capacity of the state, but they also may constitute selective benefits that political leaders can use to engender political loyalty at the expense of combat effectiveness (Henderson & Singer, 2000; Howe, 2001; Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003). Gupta…”

“Many studies claim to show that democraciesdo a better job than nondemocracies of im-proving the welfare of the poor (Boone 1996; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; Dasgupta 1993; Franco, Alvarez-Dardet, and Ruiz 2004; Lake and Baum 2001; McGuire 2001; Moon and Dixon 1985; Przeworski et al. 2000; Sen…”

“…why norms, institutions, or other factors would inhibit conflict among rich democracies but fail to do so for poor democratic states.16 Bueno de Mesquita et al. (1999, 2003) offer an elaborate and carefully constructed explanation in which 12Old democratic dyads appear about as dispute prone…”

“In the terminology used by Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003, 2002) elected leaders tend to be chosen by a larger “selectorate” and require a larger “winning coalition” than is the case with autocrats.”

“Licenses, offices, and access to economic resources can be used in order to invest a large body of political players with a stake in the ruler’s survival (Wintrobe 1998, Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003).”

“Alastair Smith (2008) tests empirical implications from the selectorate model of Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003), which relate the survival of dictatorial regimes to the presence of natural resources. The existing evidence does suggest that the trade-off between incentives for bureaucracy and the need to “divide-and-r…”

“, Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003), Londregan and Poole (1990), and Svolik (2006). about the effects of covariates on leader survival. Survival techniques that account for the possibility that a fraction of observations may not be subject to the relevant risk—such as cure rate or split-population models—have been appli…”

“These leaders could therefore be less likely to provide benefits to the ordinary members of their ethnic groups (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003).”

“Despite the fact that in the terms used by Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003), the political system of the country has a large selectorate but quite a small winning coalition, the leadership has denied itself the ‘cheap’ option of providing private goods selectively to members of the coalition.”

“In this paper, we focus on the internal structure of the most personalized dictatorships, especially those that have exhibited strikingly poor governance (for the most recent examples, see, for example, Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; Haber 2005; Linz and Stepan 1978). Why do dictators, who presumably fear that poor ec…”

“Bueno de Mesquita et al (2003) specific coding of W and S is as follows.”

“For example, equation (11) holds if and only if (R+ γr2)12 ≥ (R + γN)P (q,q(1)).”

“At a general level, however, the broad selectorate framework in Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) considers the split of government revenue into public goods vs. redistribution, as well as government repression and civil war, as endogenous outcomes.”

“Some groups constitute a crucial part of a regime’s “winning coalition” (40) and thereby enjoy economic benefits and political privileges.”

“For a story of cooptation addressing a broader range or regime types, see Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003.”

“Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003). The model is primarily useful in explanations of economic behavior. MacDonald (2003, 552) summarizes the three parts of the rationality assumption. First, actors are assumed to employ purposive action motivated by goaloriented behavior and not simply by habit or social expectations. The…”

“…of these choices.11 For example, a prominent thread in the literature on regime transitions claims that when the group of people whose support keeps the leader in power is large enough, leaders will invest in public goods to prevent their supporters from defecting (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003).”

“Casualties influence elections in the house (Carson et al. 2001), senate (Gartner et al. 2004, Gartner and Segura forthcoming), and presidency (Karol and Miguel 2007; Voeten and Brewer 2006), and they affect leader tenure more broadly (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003).”

“Forming voting blocs around better public services (e.g., Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003, Lake & Baum 2001, McGuire 2010) Many of these actions could target either providers themselves or the politicians and policy makers to whom providers answer—that is, the short or the long route (or a…”

“We must therefore question the conventional wisdom that democracy promotes policy transparency (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; Rosendorff and Vreeland 2004).”

“7 Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003, 26.”

“This is consistent with the focus on accountability and inclusiveness mentioned as core components of democracy by Lasswell (1950), Hartlyn and Valenzuela (1994), Gasiorowski (1990, 1993), Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003), and others.”

“In this stripped down representation of the selectorate theory, we model the expected payo¤ associated with a challenger coming to o¢ ce as Q. Bueno de Mesquita et al (2002, 2003) provide characterizations of Q derived in the context of an in nitely repeated game.”

“Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) conclude that autocrats tend to remain in power longer than leaders in democracies, but that does not mean that autocracies as a regime type are more stable than democracies.”

“Bueno de Mesquita et al. (1999, 2002, 2005) seek to account for these observed differences in political survival and war by examining the basis and nature of resource allocation.”

“Then, Bueno de Mesquita et al. (1999, 2003) claim that members of the winning coalition support the incumbent if and only if (1 − gi) RiWi + µi + Vi(z) ≥ ci + Ri Si , (1) where Ri is the amount of resources in country i, redistributed among the winning coalition (of size Wi) if 1 Other rational…”

“As Weingast (1997) admits, and as Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) and Acemoglu & Johnson (2005) emphasize even more forcefully, it is not the formal institutions that constitute the true check on executive discretion.”

“More recent political economy models of policymaking also make the Weberian assumptions, including Bueno de Mesquita et. al.”

“Regarding the potential effects of age on regime change (during and after the cold war), I reproduced Geddes’s variables—age, age squared, and age cubed— that enable the logistic regression to test for curvilinear effects of time, including theories that the hazard rate declines after a ruler’s initial years in power…”

“39 Rigged elections could also be thought of as cases of data manipulation (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; Magaloni 2006; Simpser 2013).”

“Aside from needing resources to please supporters who keep them in power (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003), demands for change to the status quo outside of state-sanctioned political interactions can signal to interested observers that the regime lacks legitimacy (Davenport 1995).”

“Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) argue that the amount of support leaders require to stay in power may be quite small under certain institutional arrangements.”

“[6] Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, Alastair Smith, Randolph M.”

“2Contributions to this voluminous literature include Blaydes and Kayser (2011), Ross (2006), Kudamatsu (2012), Besley and Kudamatsu (2006), Baum and Lake (2003), Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003), Stasavage (2005a), Brown and Hunter (2004), Adsera, Boix, and Payne (2003), and Min (2010).”

“The ratio between the size of the winning coalition and the selectorate must lie on the unit interval ðBueno de Mesquita et al. 2003Þ.”

“But our broader concept of inclusiveness also captures the size of the group—the selectorate—that chooses the executive or the legislature and holds them accountable (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003).”