Technological Foundations of Political Instability

Konstantin Sonin, Dmitry Dagaev, Natalia Lamberova and Anton Sobolev

No 9787, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: There has been a wide-spread belief that elections with a wide franchise following removal of an oppressive dictator lead to establishment of a government that is not vulnerable to mass protest. At the same time, most of the post-World War II non-constitutional exits of recently-installed autocratic leaders were caused by elite coups, rather than popular protests. The recent experience of Egypt, where the democratic post-Mubarak government, a result of the Arab Spring, collapsed after having had almost uninterrupted protests since its first day in office, offers a striking counterexample to both of these patterns. We demonstrate that this is a general phenomenon: the same technological shock, arrival of social media, that makes the incumbent vulnerable, lays foundation for continuous instability of the subsequent democratic government. Our theoretical model, which incorporates protest into a Downsian framework, takes into account specific features of modern protests: the significant role of social media and the absence of the partisan or personalized leadership during popular unrest. Case studies of the Arab countries with and without large-scale protests corroborate our theoretical findings.

Keywords: Arab spring; Autocracy; Collective action; Regime change; Social media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 L96 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara, nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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