The Political Economy of Revolution and Democracy

Wilber A. Chaffee

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 1984, vol. 43, issue 4, 385-398

Abstract: Abstract. Electoral democracy and revolutionary violence are both forms of political competition involving leaders vying for public office. Political leaders seek benefit from public position. By redefining those benefits into concepts of profit and costs, a rational choice framework can give an ordering of those types of political competition which are of the greatest value to officeholders, assuming that they are profit‐maximizers. The ordering that result conforms to the definition of prisoner's dilemma and creates a game theoretic matrix based on leader's choices of either electoral or violent competition. The result is an explanation of various modes of political competition. The analysis draws on experimental work on prisoner's dilemma and on empirical material drawn from Latin American politics. Revolution, democracy, and dictatorship are shown to be varieties of a basic cost‐benefit analysis of political leaders.

Date: 1984
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1536-7150.1984.tb01863.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ajecsc:v:43:y:1984:i:4:p:385-398

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0002-9246

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Economics and Sociology is currently edited by Laurence S. Moss

More articles in American Journal of Economics and Sociology from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().