Policy Failure and Political Survival

Bruce Bueno De Mesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson and Alastair Smith
Additional contact information
James D. Morrow: Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Randolph M. Siverson: Department of Political Science, University of California, Davis
Alastair Smith: Department of Political Science, Yale University

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 1999, vol. 43, issue 2, 147-161

Abstract: The authors advance a theory of the effects of political institutions on state policy. The theory explains how political institutions affect the ability of leaders to maintain themselves in office, why some political systems are more prone to policy failure than others, and why autocrats create mass political systems. The key characteristics of institutions in this theory are the sizes of a polity's selectorate and winning coalition. The authors derive hypotheses from the theory and test those hypotheses using a data set covering more than 2,700 leaders from all states in the period from 1816 to 1990. The statistical tests demonstrate that (1) large winning coalitions are associated with enhanced economic growth, (2) tenure is shortened by a large winning coalition but lengthened by a large selectorate, and (3) in the face of policy failure, leaders with a large selectorate are more likely to survive than those in systems with a large winning coalition. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of these results.

Date: 1999
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002799043002002 (text/html)

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:sae:jocore:v:43:y:1999:i:2:p:147-161

DOI: 10.1177/0022002799043002002

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Conflict Resolution from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().