The Economics of Autocracy and Majority Rule: The Invisible Hand and the Use of Force

McGuire, Martin C.; Olson, Mancur

doi:10.1007/978-1-349-26284-7_3

Cited by 434 publications

(385 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Turnover of asset-owning elites creates a dynamic version of checks and balances in non-democratic polities. We thus confirm the beneficial impact of elites' asset ownership, as posited by McGuire and Olson (1996), but only conditional on elites' rotation. It is noteworthy that such effect is observed only in autocracies where the combination of power shifts and asset ownership serves as a substitute for conventional democratic accountability.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 70%

“…However what matters in the case of property rights is not the relative size of the elites, but the size of their assets, which could create sufficiently powerful incentives for the provision of this particular kind of public good even without democratic accountability. This hypothesis is consistent with the logic of McGuire and Olson (1996), except that it requires a less-than-stationary "bandit".…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 81%

“…Finally, as it was mentioned earlier, McGuire and Olson's logic implicitly assumes the "equal treatment" principle which is unlikely to be honoured by a "stationary bandit". Rotation of ruling elites is a proxy for equal treatment, and as the models presented in the next section demonstrate, it restores the validity of McGuire and Olson's (1996) insight.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 70%

“…Such tests do not support the "stationary bandit" conjecture: regimes with longer tenure tend to have less secure property rights (Besley and Ghatak, 2010). McGuire and Olson (1996) point out to another factor that could potentially improve policies and institutions supplied by an autocratic regime, i.e. asset ownership by the ruling class.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…This shortcut to the private sector is a potential substitute for democratic accountability, further aligning incentives of an asset-owning autocrat with the needs of the society at large. Such incentives could be quite powerful: sometimes even a relatively small share of the economy's assets owned by an autocrat ensures full social optimality of his policies (McGuire and Olson, 1996). This optimistic view is however conditional on an important caveat: it implicitly assumes that the ruling class is subjected to the same rules and requirements as the rest of the private sector.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Ruling Elites' Rotation and Asset Ownership: Implications for Property Rights

Polishchuk

Syunyaev

2013

SSRN Journal

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 70%

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 81%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 70%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Ruling Elites' Rotation and Asset Ownership: Implications for Property Rights

Polishchuk

Syunyaev

2013

SSRN Journal

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Narratives in an authoritarian environment: Narrative strategies, plots, and characters in Moscow’s public transport reforms debate

Uldanov

Gabriichuk

Каратеев

et al. 2021

European Policy Analysis

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This article draws on the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to analyze the recent debates over Moscow's public transport policy. Despite a proliferation of NPF implementations in recent years, applications in authoritarian institutional settings remain rare. We seek to fill this gap by examining how the actors combine narrative strategies, characters, and plots to advocate their vision of public transport development in Moscow. To this end, this study tests NPF meso-level hypotheses on narrative strategies and their connections with plots and characters used in the context of Russian electoral authoritarian regime. The results show that the NPF hypotheses are applicable for the analysis of policy debates in an authoritarian context. While the governmental coalition uses an angel shift strategy-focusing on heroes, beneficiaries, and stories of control-to contain the scope of conflict, the opposing coalition implies a devil shift strategy with a specific attention to villains, victims, and different plots to expand the scope of conflict.

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The mitigating effect of governance quality on the finance‐renewable energy‐growth nexus: Some international evidence

Kassi

Dong

2021

Int. J Fin Econ

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This study analyses the conditional effect of governance quality on the finance‐renewable energy‐growth nexus in 123 countries from 1990 to 2017. We built composite indexes of financial development and governance quality through the principal component analysis (PCA) using several financial variables and governance indicators. We employed the generalized method of moments (GMM) and the two‐stage least squares (2SLS) techniques, but also the Granger non‐causality in Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012). First, the disaggregated analysis shows that renewable energy consumption, financial inclusion, financial efficiency, and financial stability have positive marginal effects on economic growth under a good governance quality, except for financial depth. Second, the aggregated analysis confirms the positive marginal impact of financial development on growth only in low‐income economies, whereas renewable energy consumption has positive marginal effects only in lower‐middle‐income and upper‐middle‐income economies. Finally, the results of the causality analysis differ among countries. Overall, governance quality has a threshold effect on the finance‐renewable energy‐growth nexus, which varies across countries. Accordingly, our study suggests more improvements in the governance quality in these countries, especially in the low‐income and high‐income countries, to enhance the marginal impacts of financial development and renewable energy consumption on growth.

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The Economics of Autocracy and Majority Rule: The Invisible Hand and the Use of Force

Cited by 434 publications

References 9 publications

Ruling Elites' Rotation and Asset Ownership: Implications for Property Rights

Ruling Elites' Rotation and Asset Ownership: Implications for Property Rights

Narratives in an authoritarian environment: Narrative strategies, plots, and characters in Moscow’s public transport reforms debate

The mitigating effect of governance quality on the finance‐renewable energy‐growth nexus: Some international evidence

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