The Need for Enemies

Leopoldo Fergusson, James Robinson, Ragnar Torvik and Juan Vargas

No 18313, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We develop a political economy model where some politicians have a comparative advantage in undertaking a task and this gives them an electoral advantage. This creates an incentive to underperform in the task in order to maintain their advantage. We interpret the model in the context of fighting against insurgents in a civil war and derive two main empirical implications which we test using Colombian data during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe. First, as long as rents from power are sufficiently important, large defeats for the insurgents should reduce the probability that politicians with comparative advantage, President Uribe, will fight the insurgents. Second, this effect should be larger in electorally salient municipalities. We find that after the three largest victories against the FARC rebel group, the government reduced its efforts to eliminate the group and did so differentially in politically salient municipalities. Our results therefore support the notion that such politicians need enemies to maintain their political advantage and act so as to keep the enemy alive.

JEL-codes: D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
Note: POL
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published as Leopoldo Fergusson & James A. Robinson & Ragnar Torvik & Juan F. Vargas, 2016. "The Need for Enemies," The Economic Journal, vol 126(593), pages 1018-1054.

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Journal Article: The Need for Enemies (2016)
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