Cooperative Autocracies: Leader Survival, Creditworthiness, and Bilateral Investment Treaties*

Arias, Eric; Hollyer, James R.; Rosendorff, B. Peter

doi:10.1111/ajps.12383

Cited by 53 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 54 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For example, autocracies may sign BITs at higher rates because they have more to gain from using international agreements as substitutes for strong domestic property rights. Arias, Hollyer, andRosendorff 2018. 99.…”

Section: International Pressurementioning

confidence: 99%

Recapturing Regime Type in International Relations: Leaders, Institutions, and Agency Space

Hyde¹,

Saunders²

2020

Int Org

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A wave of recent research challenges the role of regime type in international relations. One striking takeaway is that democratic and autocratic leaders can often achieve similar levels of domestic constraint, which in many issue areas results in similar international outcomes—leading many to question traditional views of democracies as distinctive in their international relations. In this review essay, we use recent contributions in the field to build what we call a “malleable constraints” framework, in which all governments have an institutionally defined default level of domestic audience constraint that is generally higher in democracies, but leaders maintain some agency within these institutions and can strategically increase their exposure to or insulation from this constraint. Using this framework, we argue that regime type is still a crucial differentiator in international affairs even if, as recent studies suggest, democratic and autocratic leaders can sometimes be similarly constrained by domestic audiences and thus achieve similar international outcomes. This framework helps reconcile many competing claims in recent scholarship, including the puzzle of why autocracies do not strategically increase domestic audience constraint more often. Just because autocracies can engage audience constraints and democracies can escape them does not mean that they can do so with equal ease, frequency, or risk.

show abstract

Section: International Pressurementioning

confidence: 99%

Recapturing Regime Type in International Relations: Leaders, Institutions, and Agency Space

Hyde¹,

Saunders²

2020

Int Org

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This follows a long line of scholarship on the domestic sources of trade policy that emphasize that trade agreements signal competence to domestic audiences (Mansfield, Milner, and Rosendorff 2002;Mansfield and Milner 2012), reward key domestic industries (Milner 1997;Chase 2003), and increase leadership tenure (Hollyer and Rosendorff 2012). Mazumder (2016) and Arias, Hollyer, and Rosendorff (2015) find that BITs prolong government tenure in autocracies, suggesting domestic political advantages to BIT signing. Additionally, Jensen and coauthors (2014) find that politicians often claim credit for multinational corporation (MNC) investment decisions.…”

Section: The Rise Of Bitsmentioning

confidence: 85%

Conflicted Capital: The Effect of Civil Conflict on Patterns of BIT Signing

Billing

Lugg

2017

Journal of Conflict Resolution

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Why do developing countries commit to costly international agreements? Massive arbitral awards and the discovery that rich countries write investment rules have led to a newfound appreciation of the costs of bilateral investment treaties (BITs). Yet, developing countries continue to sign them. This article advances a novel argument for why governments sign potentially costly agreements. We argue that civil conflict changes the decision calculus of governments by rendering them domestically insecure. This insecurity makes governments more willing to sign agreements, like BITs, that sacrifice future policy autonomy. BITs can attract foreign direct investment (FDI) and signal competence, which have important domestic political benefits. BITs are also attractive postconflict since they can be copied quickly from past templates and require few ex ante policy changes. Empirical tests of over 150 countries from 1960 to 2012 demonstrate that governments sign more BITs after civil conflict. Additional tests indicate that postconflict BITs increase FDI inflows, especially after devastating conflict. Our results provide a unique perspective on why governments cede sovereignty to international institutions.

show abstract

“…However, we follow the standard operationalization in the literature and use the natural logarithm of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (e.g. see works by Acemoglu et al, 2009; Arias et al, 2018; Ishak, 2019; Przeworski and Limongi, 1997). The source of the data for GDP per capita is the recently updated data set of the Maddison Project (Bolt et al, 2018).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic development: How does it influence the survival of different types of autocracy?

Stockemer

Kailitz

2020

International Political Science Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Modernization theory is one of the most influential theories in political science. However, to date, studies testing the impact of modernization on political regimes have almost completely focused on democracies. We aim at broadening the discussion to autocracies and ask the following research question: What impact has economic development on the survival of different types of autocracy? Using data covering 1946 to 2016, we ascertain – mainly through logistic regression analysis – that the level of economic development affects not only the endurance of democracies but also that of various types of autocracy. In more detail, we find that economic development prolongs the survival of ideocracies and personalist autocracies. The effect of economic modernization on military dictatorships, monarchies and electoral autocracies is very limited. In contrast, one party autocracies are the only regime type whose survival chances (moderately) decrease with modernization.

show abstract

Cooperative Autocracies: Leader Survival, Creditworthiness, and Bilateral Investment Treaties*

Cited by 53 publications

References 54 publications

Recapturing Regime Type in International Relations: Leaders, Institutions, and Agency Space

Recapturing Regime Type in International Relations: Leaders, Institutions, and Agency Space

Conflicted Capital: The Effect of Civil Conflict on Patterns of BIT Signing

Economic development: How does it influence the survival of different types of autocracy?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About