Add and rule
Halvor Mehlum,
Karl Ove Moene and
Gry Østenstad
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2025, vol. 229, issue C
Abstract:
We suggest a new mechanism to explain political and economic inequality in resource rich countries. The mechanism is based on the premise that migrants are treated less generously in autocracies than in democracies. As a consequence, democracies want fewer migrants than autocracies. After democratization a new government may therefore start out with (potentially many) more migrants than their preferred level. These excess migrants, inherited from the autocracy, represent a costly legacy that makes democracy less attractive to citizens. With democracy less attractive, it is cheaper to compensate citizens for not challenging the autocratic regime. Not only that — by adding even more migrants, democratization becomes even less attractive, enabling the ruler to keep even more of the resource rents for himself without a threat of losing power.
Keywords: Migration; Natural resources; Political economy; Equality; Autocracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268124004669
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
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:eee:jeborg:v:229:y:2025:i:c:s0167268124004669
DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106852
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.
More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().