The Logic of Political Survival

“…spent considerable time exploring the reasons behind these differences focusing on democratic institutions (Morgan and Campbell 1991; Maoz and Russett 1993; Leeds and Davis 1999; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003) and democratic norms (Dixon 1993, 1994; Raymond 1994; Mitchell 2002; Risse-Kappen 1996).”

“Carlsson and Lundström (2003) also introduce the index of economic freedom (ECFREE ) and the Political Freedom Index (POLFREE ) in this line of literature.(17) They claim that economic freedom leads to a more efficient allocation of resources and therefore to a lower level of emission.(18) The intuitive reasoning behi…”

“According to the selectorate theory in Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003), democratic leaders need a larger coalition to support them relative to non democratic leaders.”

“See, e.g., Lipset 1959; Przeworski et al. 2000; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; Sen 2004; Haggard and Kaufmann 2008; Gerring, Thacker and Alfaro 2012.”

“Even a highly authoritarian government has some group allowing it to retain power, which forces it to refer potential policy changes to another body before changing the government’s official position (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003).”

“See Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003).”

“Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) argue that states, regardless of their government type, have some set of people who’s support is necessary to keep the leader in power; they call this the “winning coalition.”

“Since a large number of voters determines a government’s political survival (Adserà et al. 2003; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland 2010; Dahl 1989; Lake and Baum 2001; Wittman 1995), the government has incentives to select policy instruments that appeal to these voters,…”

“…important, rational choice-based theories in the field of comparative political economy that analyse the political logic of regime survival in different regime settings and their consequences for policy-making in autocracies and democracies (Wintrobe 1990, 1998, Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003).”

“…politicians have legislated from misguided beliefs about what causes development, or because incumbents have had strong incentives to pursue particular economic policies despite knowing that they retard development (see, for example, Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012; Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003).”

“For example, Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) posit and demonstrate that as the size of the winning coalition for leadership selection increases, the effectiveness of private goods as a means of retaining power decreases; since democratic leaders are brought into power by a larger number of voters,…”

“…institutions react to poor outcomes but the ability to do so is conditioned on other institutions more than the source of the shock (see e.g. Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003) 28 there are fewer parties in the governing coalition than in the opposition, leads to a greater concern for welfare.”

“…and economic decisions require the building of large coalitions to enact policies, which has been hypothesized to lead to less policy instability (Tsebelis 2002), greater public goods provision (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003), and more redistributive social policies (Haggard and Kaufman 2008).”

“This is because they can successfully rally their support base when faced with a threat, and owing to strong patron-client bonds, supporters are more likely to defend the ruler in order to maintain their benefits (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003).”

“Strong empirical evidence, however, about how the co-constitution between agent and structure influence the decision-making process or the outcome, however, has been lacking (e.g., Barnett & Duvall, 2005; Dessler, 1989).”

“While some autocrats may also invest in projects to benefit the people, they are farmore likely to use extracted wealth for individual gain (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003; Olson, 2000; Wintrobe, 1998).”

“Drawing on rational choice theory, the basic assumption is that governments are interested in maximizing their time in office, which has famously been coined the logic of political survival (Morrow et al., 2008; Mesquita et al., 2003).”

“…that loses disputes or wars, however, has a much higher impact on the probability of a democratic leader being removed from office, as these depend more on good public policy performances (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003; see also Chiozza and Goemans, 2004; Goemans, 2008; Pachter, 1982: 611).”

“…responsive to diverse preferences than autocratic regimes, since democratic rulers tend to have a bigger winning coalition (and “selectorate”) and thus must provide more citizens with more public goods and services to stay in power (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; Carment, James, and Taydas 2006).”

“And they worry about their own survival in office (Bueno de Mesquita, 2003).”

“At home, doubts about her competency can emerge, diminishing the leader’s prospects for remaining in office (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; Fearon 1994; Schultz 2001).”

“Since candidates need the support of the selectorate, which is defined as the group of all party members who are entitled to vote in the party leadership selection (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2002, 2003), they are generally responsive to the median selector’s ideal policy position.”

“Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) argue that public spending can be used to ‘buy’ allegiance and thus reduce the risk that the people will support challengers to the ruling elite.”

“The movement away from the unitary actor conception of nations toward a consideration of the survival-induced motivations of political leaders is a growing trend in the study of international relations (see for example Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003 and Goemans 2000).”

“…in countries with a small winning coalition relative to the overall selectorate, there are a series of incentives for tolerating corruption, rent seeking, and the abuse of human rights (see Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2005b, 180–2) in ways that maintain loyalty among elites to the governing coalition.”

“Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) obtain their misleading results because W is correlated with democracy, and the biased procedure they use exploits this fact to inflate the apparent effect of W and decrease its standard error.”

“…terrorism precisely because it strengthens authoritarian leaders who effectively prevent various forms of conflict, including terrorism (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003).4 We thus expect that governance aid should be negatively related to terrorism, though given mixed expectations about democracy…”

“Division and separation of power—a central element of many democracies— is not in our theory (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003, 34–35).”

“Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003.”

“…included in the rational-choice perspective; for example, political elites typically prefer to remain in office for as long as possible (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003), rather than protect their citizens from disaster impacts, whereas the citizens prefer to reduce disaster vulnerability by…”

“Whereas the survival of autocratic leaders hinges on the continued flow of resources to a small group of supporters, the survival of democrats is contingent on satisfying the demands of a large winning coalition (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003).”

“Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) point out that government spending decisions are strategic responses aimed at maintaining power.”

“We are interested in interdependence relationships between policymakers and the electorate (e.g., Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2005)—reflected, in particular, in how policy-makers interact with organized interest groups that aggregate electoral interests into powerful voices (e.g., Skodvin et al. 2010).”

“…the terrorist’s ability to recruit, fundraise, mobilize, and attack (Crenshaw, 1981; Eubank & Weinberg, 1994, 2001; Eyerman, 1998; Ross, 1993; Schmid, 1992). are held accountable, in terms of their policy performance, in office by some subset of the population (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003).”

“Following Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003), I assume that the ruler provides public goods in exchange for citizens’ cooperation, but private goods in exchange for elites’ cooperation.”

“Since foreign aid is a resource that, once disbursed by donors, is generally at the disposal of recipient country leaders,4 the Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) model implies that aid’s impact on political survival could vary depending on the size of W.”

“Likewise, they allow for testing whether size of regime support coalition has implications for policymaking in foreign and domestic policy arenas (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003).”

“Post-conflict elections present the opportunity to become a part of the selectorate and to join the winning coalition (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003:42).”

“Politicians are motivated to pursue policies that insure first and foremost their political survival (Nordhaus, 1975; Mayhew, 1974; Levi, 1988; Geddes, 1994; Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003; Gandhi and Przeworski, 2007).”

“Several studies find that democracies are better at providing public services than autocratic regimes (e.g., Lake and Baum 2001, Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003, Min 2015).”

“So the final question that arises is this: for whom are the policies in different regimes devised? Adherents of the rational choice theory of Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) believe”

“While the political survival of the Chinese regime fits the logic of Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003)—tiny winning coalition and large selectorate—it is more difficult to explain the increases in public goods that have accompanied CCP rule within the confines of the theory.”

“41 Theorists of autocratic survival have argued that semi-representative institutions can enable dictators to broaden their support base enough to survive without losing ultimate control over the state (Boix and Svolik 2013; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; Gandhi and Przeworski 2007).”