Author: Ronald Wintrobe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521794497
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 404

View

Book Description
This book uses rational choice theory to understand the behaviour of dictators.

Author: Ronald Wintrobe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521583299
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 402

View

Book Description
Although much of the world still lives today, as always, under dictatorship, the behavior of these regimes and of their leaders often appears irrational and mysterious. This book uses rational choice theory to understand dictators: How do "successful" dictatorships stay in power? What determines the repressiveness of a regime? How do their economies work? The book contains many applications, including chapters on Nazi Germany, Soviet Communism, South Africa under apartheid, and Pinochet's Chile. It also provides a guide to the policies that should be followed by the democracies towards dictatorships.

Author: Daron Acemoglu
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521855266
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 444

View

Book Description
This book develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. Different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political power and resources. Thus democracy is preferred by the majority of citizens, but opposed by elites. Dictatorship nevertheless is not stable when citizens can threaten social disorder and revolution. In response, when the costs of repression are sufficiently high and promises of concessions are not credible, elites may be forced to create democracy. By democratizing, elites credibly transfer political power to the citizens, ensuring social stability. Democracy consolidates when elites do not have strong incentive to overthrow it. These processes depend on (1) the strength of civil society, (2) the structure of political institutions, (3) the nature of political and economic crises, (4) the level of economic inequality, (5) the structure of the economy, and (6) the form and extent of globalization.

Author: A. Carl LeVan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107081149
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 309

View

Book Description
This book argues that the structure of the policy-making process in Nigeria explains variations in government performance better than other commonly cited factors.

Author: Christopher Kobrak
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781571816290
Category : Business and politics
Languages : en
Pages : 286

View

Book Description
For much of the twentieth century, the prevalence of dictatorial regimes has left business, especially multinational firms, with a series of complex and for the most part unwelcome choices. This volume, which includes essays by noted American and European scholars such as Mira Wilkins, Gerald Feldman, Peter Hayes, and Wilfried Feldenkirchen, sets business activity in its political and social context and describes some of the strategic and tactical responses of firms investing from or into Europe to a myriad of opportunities and risks posed by host or home country authoritarian governments during the interwar period. Although principally a work of history, it puts into perspective some commercial dilemmas with which practitioners and business theorists must still unfortunately grapple.

Author: Jennifer Gandhi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521155717
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

View

Book Description
Often dismissed as window-dressing, nominally democratic institutions, such as legislatures and political parties, play an important role in non-democratic regimes. In a comprehensive cross-national study of all non-democratic states from 1946 to 2002 that examines the political uses of these institutions by dictators, Gandhi finds that legislative and partisan institutions are an important component in the operation and survival of authoritarian regimes. She examines how and why these institutions are useful to dictatorships in maintaining power, analyzing the way dictators utilize institutions as a forum in which to organize political concessions to potential opposition in an effort to neutralize threats to their power and to solicit cooperation from groups outside of the ruling elite. The use of legislatures and parties to co-opt opposition results in significant institutional effects on policies and outcomes under dictatorship.

Author: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
Publisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 161039044X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

View

Book Description
Explains the theory of political survival, particularly in cases of dictators and despotic governments, arguing that political leaders seek to stay in power using any means necessary, most commonly by attending to the interests of certain coalitions.

Author: Anne Meng
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108834892
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 277

View

Book Description
Examining constitutional rules and power-sharing in Africa reveals how some dictatorships become institutionalized, rule-based systems.

Author: Masaaki Higashijima
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 047290275X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 498

View

Book Description
Contrary to our stereotypical views, dictators often introduce elections in which they refrain from employing blatant electoral fraud. Why do electoral reforms happen in autocracies? Do these elections destabilize autocratic rule? The Dictator’s Dilemma at the Ballot Box argues that strong autocrats who can garner popular support become less dependent on coercive electioneering strategies. When autocrats fail to design elections properly, elections backfire in the form of coups, protests, and the opposition’s stunning election victories. The book’s theoretical implications are tested on a battery of cross-national analyses with newly collected data on autocratic elections and in-depth comparative case studies of the two Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Author: Paul R. Gregory
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521533676
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 324

View

Book Description
This book uses the formerly secret Soviet state and Communist Party archives to describe the creation and operations of the Soviet administrative command system. It concludes that the system failed not because of the 'jockey'(i.e. Stalin and later leaders) but because of the 'horse' (the economic system). Although Stalin was the system's prime architect, the system was managed by thousands of 'Stalins' in a nested dictatorship. The core values of the Bolshevik Party dictated the choice of the administrative command system, and the system dictated the political victory of a Stalin-like figure. This study pinpoints the reasons for the failure of the system - poor planning, unreliable supplies, the preferential treatment of indigenous enterprises, the lack of knowledge of planners, etc. - but also focuses on the basic principal-agent conflict between planners and producers, which created a sixty-year reform stalemate.