The Logic of Political Survival

“Duration of individual rule in the modern period has long been the subject of empirical study in political science (Bienen and van de Walle 1991; Blondel 1980; Bueno de Mesquita, Smith, Siverson and Morrow 2003; Goemans, Gleditsch, and Chiozza 2009).”

“At one level, much of political science is about how people select, remove, and hold accountable those empowered to make important decisions (e.g., Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003, Przeworski et al. 1999).”

“According to Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2004) rebel leaders face a time inconsistency problem when seeking supporters.”

“Lake and Baum (2001) and Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) present empirical evidence supporting this prediction for public education (literacy rates, enrollment rates, persistence to grade level) and public health (immunization rates, access to clean water, infant mortality rates).”

“Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2001) rely on a similar specification.”

“…repressive regime is the cooperation from powerful political groups (e.g., military and police forces, influential business groups) (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; Wintrobe 1998), the growing dependence of influential groups on the leadership’s supply of scarce resources enhances the…”

“In the tests that follow, we evaluate the effect of cooptation on future (as opposed to contemporaneous) levels of repression because research has indicated that changes in institutions of governance often take a few years to impact policy outcomes (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003).”

“…1995).13 Drawing on the same theories, democracies were also found to provide higher levels of public goods for their citizens (Lake and Baum, 2001), enjoy higher rates of economic growth (Baum and Lake, 2003), and act in a variety of other distinctive ways (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003).”

“A central premise of this work is that elected officials have an incentive to be faithful to the policy preferences of their constituencies through the reelection incentive (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003).”

“…authoritarian politics assume that parliaments allow for the distribution of rents to actors critical to regime stability (Boix and Svolik 2013; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; Gandhi 2008; Gandhi and Przeworski 2006, 2007; Lust-Okar 2006; Magaloni 2008; Malesky and Schuler 2010; Svolik 2009, 2012).”

“See Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; and Chiozza and Goemans 2003 and 2004.”

“For them, first leaders are more likely than replacements to remain in a conflict because they are more prone to a variety of informational biases pivotal member of his or her winning coalition to remain in power (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003a; Bueno de Mesquita and Siverson 1995).”

“19 In all specifications involving incidents of mass mobilization and unrest, we draw our outcome variables from the Cross National Time Series Archive (Banks, 1979), as made available by Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003). These data consist of counts of the number of anti-government demonstrations, strikes, riots, guer…”

“…process for removing a government from power, forcing decision makers to analyze how their actions are likely to affect their tenure, leading to a significantly decreased likelihood of conflict between democracies (Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman 1992; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; Gaubatz 1991).”

“…in the causal relationship between democracy and, say, civil liberties (e.g., Møller and Skaaning, 2013), equality (e.g., Boix, 2003), or public goods (e.g., Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003), one should carefully distinguish these features from each other in conceptualization and measurement.”

“Since prior to revelation, all affinity orderings are 4Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2002, 2003) examine optimal coalition choice.”

“position in the ordering, as assumed in Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) .”

“Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) explore the implications of such variation in WS across political systems—and especially across various types of nondemocracies—for their stability, quality of governance, provision of public versus private goods, and participation in international conflict.7 As they demonstrate, leader…”

“Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) present a theory of democratization that combines elements of both of these approaches.”

“Becoming embroiled in protracted, escalating, stalemated, costly, or losing conflicts is likely to hurt the leader’s popularity (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003).”

“A major dilemma in democratic policy-making is that bad policies can be good politics and good policies can be bad politics (Bueno de Mesquita et al, 2003).”

“…constructed many theories to suggest when and why politicians spend on programs that are more likely to reach larger segments of society (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003) and promote growth (e.g., Stasavage 2005 and Hicken & Simmons 2008) and not simply result in inefficient patronage spending (…”

“This makes efficient governance and provision of public goods a more effective means of winning the necessary number of supporters to gain office than patronage and corruption (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003).”

“, Fein (1995), Gartner and Regan (1996), Poe, Tate and Keith (1999), Regan and Henderson (2002), Davenport and Armstrong (2004), Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2005), Davenport (2007b), Cingranelli and Filippov (2010).”

“2Notable exceptions include Islam (2006), who focuses on the speed with which data are reported; Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003), Rosendorff and Vreeland (2006), Lebovic (2006), and Williams (2009), who examine aspects of data dissemination; and Stone (2008), who treats data dissemination as a…”

“The internal threats can be divided into two categories: those from within the ruling elite, and those from the masses (cf. Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; Gandhi and Przeworski 2007; Magaloni 2008; Svolik 2012).”

“Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) assume that all leaders secure support through the provision of a mix of private and public goods.”

“1 See for example the theoretical frameworks in Acemoglu and Robinson (2006), Boix (2003), Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003), and Wintrobe (1998).”

“Meanwhile, Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003), Besley and Kudamatsu (2007), and Guriev and Sonin (2009) build models of accountability between a dictator and his selectorate and draw implications for economic performance and leadership turnover in authoritarian regimes.”

“‘‘Selectorates’’ for Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) and those ‘‘able to impose costs on the regime’’ for Fearon (2000) or Oi and Zhao (2007).”

“88 mansfield and snyder 2005; Bueno de mesquita et al. 2004; Weeks 2008.”

“In the context of party leaders, we have learned how leaders manipulate the agenda (Riker 1996), serve as agents of their parties (Fiorina and Shepsle 1989), and choose policies that enhance their survival (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003).”

“In addition, since democratic political leaders are responsive to a larger winning coalition and lack sufficient resources to reward their comparatively large group of supporters with private goods, they have to resort to the provision of public goods – including economic prosperity – to ensure political support and,…”

“Theory and empirical research have shown that democracies tend to choose more efficient economic policies than other regimes (e.g. Wittman, 1989, 1995; Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003; Milner with Kubota, 2005).”

“Such a view is explicitly found in the selectorate theory of politics due to de Mesquita et al. (2003), also echoed elsewhere (e.g., Morrison, 2007; Djankov et al., 2008; de Mesquita and Smith, 2013).”

“To capture this mediating influence, I weight foreign aid per capita by the size of the winning coalition (W), drawing winning coalition data from Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003).”

“…and crisis decision making include Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler (2009), Tomz (2007), Chiozza and Goemans (2003, 2004), Schultz (2005), Bueno de Mesquita et al. (1999, 2003), Mueller (1973), DeNardo (1995), Stam (1999), Berinsky (2009), Holsti (2004), James and Oneal (1991), Jentlesen (1992),…”

“…on foreign policy considerations of autocratic vs. democratic leaders have so far mainly concentrated on issues of war (see e.g. Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003, pp. 243–248) and trade (Frieden and Lake 2000, Milner and Kubota 2005), while preferences for regime types have not yet been a…”

“…autocratic leaders do have political constituencies whose support they must maintain to remain in power (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 1999; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2004; Weeks 2008), in comparison to democracies, autocratic governments are less vulnerable to the demands of the domestic public.9…”

“We should acknowledge, however, that theoretical and empirical work has shown long-term economic performance is endogenous to regime type and that tenure in office is endogenous to economic performance given regime type (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003).”

“…can be expected to work in the interest of the majority (i.e., the rural population) since a larger portion of the citizenry is included in the political process, whereas authoritarian regimes will frequently only see to a narrow elite (Bueno de Mequita et al., 2003; Gandhi and Przeworski, 2006).”

“…of W here, our empirical analysis controls for the size of S. 706 daniel yuichi kono and gabriella r. montinola of WL adopt a threshold utility that ‘‘[does] not exceed the value of the challenger’s best offer, assuming a normal economy (the shock equals 0)’’ (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003, 284).”

“Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003), for instance, argue that leaders choose foreign policies to maximize their probability of staying in power, and that the best policies for staying in power vary with the political institutional structure of states.”

“Although this is much less sophisticated than the current leading theory of leader survival by Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003), it can be defended on the grounds that interstate crises (or wars) are events whose outcomes do not really have common or private good attributes.”

“Under such conditions, the allegiance that the government enjoys will be limited to those who are favored and rewarded by the government thorough provision of private goods, and hence governments will not be able to attract support from a large constituency (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003). Moreover, the legitimacy of…”

“To date, the diversionary use of force offers the best-known leader-level explanation for international conflict (Simmel 1898; Levy 1989; Richards et al. 1993; G. Downs and Rocke 1994; Bueno de Mesquita and Siverson 1995; Gelpi 1997; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; Mansfield and Snyder 2005).”

“…of Skocpol’s five components is reflected in the range of recent efforts to characterize this key concept: fair public goods provision (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003), the ability to increase the costs associated with challenging the regime (Gates et al., 2006), government revenue and…”