The Political Economy of Dictatorship

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, Sep 25, 2000 - Business & Economics - 390 pages
''Although much of the world still lives today, as always, under dictatorship, the behaviour of these regimes and of their leaders often appears irrational and mysterious. In The Political Economy of Dictatorship, Ronald Wintrobe uses rational choice theory to model dictatorships: their strategies for accumulating power, the constraints on their behavior, and why they are often more popular than is commonly accepted. The book explores both the politics and the economics of dictatorships, and the interaction between them. The questions addressed include: What determines the repressiveness of a regime? Can political authoritarianism be 'good' for the economy? After the fall, who should be held responsible for crimes against human rights? The book contains many applications, including chapters on Nazi Germany, Soviet Communism, South Africa under apartheid, the ancient Roman Empire and Pinochet's Chile. It also provides a guide to the policies which should be followed by the democracies towards dictatorships.''--

From inside the book

Contents

Introduction
3
2 Images of dictatorship
7
3 Plan of the book
15
The Dictators Dilemma
20
economics and the enforcement problem
25
3 The instruments of political power
33
4 Conclusion
39
Equilibrium political repression
43
The bureaucratic economy I the model
197
2 Rents shortages and bribes
204
3 The Soviet system as a bureaucracy
208
4 Conclusion
216
The bureaucratic economy II rise and fall
218
2 The decline of the system
228
3 Soviet versus Chinese reform strategies or the totalitarian twist
232
4 Conclusion
242

2 The model of a tinpot regime
46
3 Totalitarian regimes
58
4 Policy implications
68
5 Conclusion
76
Tyranny and timocracy
77
2 Timocracy and tyranny
79
3 War
84
4 Gifts
86
timocracy
90
6 From timocracy to tyranny
101
7 Conclusion
104
A more general model
106
2 The model
108
3 The derivation of regimes
118
4 Comparative statics
120
5 Conclusion
124
Economics of autocracy
125
The economy of dictatorship
127
2 Alternative approaches to the economy of dictatorship
131
elements of the autocratic economy
138
4 Conclusion
143
Redistribution and rentseeking
145
2 Dictatorship democracy and redistribution
149
3 Redistribution in capitalistauthoritarian states
160
Apartheid
163
2 The polity under apartheid
165
3 The apartheid economy
174
4 Comparative statics and the fall of apartheid
191
5 Conclusion
195
The dynamics of dictatorship
247
2 Political inaction
248
3 Who gets harmed and why?
257
and democratic breakdown
259
5 The inefficiency of inaction
262
6 Relaxing the assumptions
265
the tradeoff between action and representation
272
8 Mathematical appendix
273
Ethnic conflict and nationalism from expressionism and futurism to kitsch
280
2 The value of ethnic capital
281
3 Intra and intergroup ethnic conflict
289
on ethnic capital
301
The simple economics of criminal bureaucratic responsibility
307
2 Authority and power
311
3 Competition in the Nazi state
316
4 The efficiency of competition in the bureaucracy of murder
321
5 Bureaucratic responsibility
327
6 Conclusion
328
Conclusion
333
2 The Dictators Dilemma and the machinery of dictatorship
335
3 Is dictatorship good for the economy?
337
4 What policies should be followed toward dictatorship by democratic regimes interested in promoting freedom?
343
5 Who is responsible?
346
6 A brief speculation about the future
348
References
351
Name index
369
Subject index
373
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases