Heterogeneous coalitions and social revolutions

Abstract

We have explained the presence of heterogeneous winning coalitions in social revolutions. In an overcrowded agrarian society, two almost identical non-productive enforcers, the landed political elite, collude and bargain over transfers with one of the two peasants to contest over a piece of land, as property rights for land are not well defined. In any other scenario, neither the grand coalition nor the coalition of two peasants and one enforcer forms, thereby deposing the other enforcer with positive probability. So, social revolutions never occur. If foreign wars weaken an enforcer, such as in China (1911), France, and Russia, adding one unit of capital makes the coalition of the peasant, the now worker, and one of the enforcers (now an industrial political elite) attractive: The excess labor can work with it; the weaker enforcer retaliates less and the stronger one more, if excluded. However, if the weaker one (the still-landed political elite) proposes first, a grand coalition forms in which he or she gets less than the other members do (desertion). There is conflict among peasants and among landed elites; thus, the concept of a coalition is more appropriate than that of a class.

Explaining mobilization for revolts by private interests and kinship relations

“…The revolt of 1691 was a purely urban, well-organized uprising in which citizens willing to mobilize had to enroll in a structured, official rebel committee. Thus, in contrast to class-based revolts that can be explained by discontent among an underprivileged agrarian class vis-à-vis a landed elite ( Nieva, 2021 ), the revolt of 1691 played out among the urban citizenry and therefore does not meet the criteria of a class movement. Moreover, because the rebel committee included members of all 15 guilds of the city, we can dismiss any interpretation of the revolt of 1691 as a conflict between guilds.…”

“…2.As in Tullock (1971), our framework conceives only two alternatives for rational actors: to mobilize or not to mobilize for revolts. An in-depth study of the preconditions of mobilization, like coalition formation (Nieva, 2021), or of intermediate forms of mobilization prior to the revolt itself (Funcke and Franke, 2016), would go beyond the scope of this paper.…”

Explaining mobilization for revolts by private interests and kinship relations. A comment on Armandola, Doehne and Rost

“…This corresponds to the status quo after the productivity shock where an oligarchy, player one, exists already, according to Armandola et al (2023), and some agents who belong to the elite are “excluded” from the winning coalition, player two. Actually, there is an equilibrium where the weaker elite, player two, is included but gets lower payoffs, which would correspond better to the historical facts as the rebel Jacob Henric-Petri held a marginal parliamentary position; see discussion after Proposition 2 in Nieva (2021) (Note that without a productivity shock, this scenario would correspond to the formation of the grand coalition where the weaker enforcer gets a lot less and thus is marginalized, as discussed earlier on). In this paper, these results are implied by the latter being relatively weak.…”

“…Coalitions, tullock contest, kinship, conflict Nieva (2019Nieva ( , 2021 suggests that, in a contest over the property rights of factors of production, the coalition that forms in equilibrium is the one whose members are the most complementary in terms of productivity and effort effectivity in a way that the expected per capita output of such coalition is the maximum among other possible coalitions. In other words, if an extraproductive individual increases enough per capita output of the prospective coalition, this individual will be added to the winning coalition; if productive individuals are complementary enough in such increases, the same will occur.…”

“…We want to end this comment by suggesting an informal possible extension for future research of the new theory to match historical events closely. The two-sector economy in Nieva (2021) (which consists of an agrarian and a manufacturing sector) should be used in this framework. In this scenario, the contest is now over a unit of land and a unit of capital.…”