The Transition to Democracy: Collective Action and Intra-elite Conflict

Sayantan Ghosal and Eugenio Proto

No 269757, Economic Research Papers from University of Warwick - Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper studies how intra-elite conáict results in transition to democracy, characterized as both franchise extension to, and lowering the individual cost of collective political action for, an initially disorganized non-elite. Two risk averse elites compete for the appropriation of a unit of social surplus with initial uncertainty about their future relative bargaining power. Both elements of a democracy are necessary to ensure that the two elites credibly commit to a mutually fairer share of the surplus and we derive su¢ cient conditions for democracy to emerge in equilibrium. Our formal analysis accounts for stylized facts that emerge from an analysis of Indian and West European democracies.

Keywords: International Development; Political Economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37
Date: 2007-07-07
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Working Paper: The Transition to Democracy: Collective Action and Intra-elite Confict (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uwarer:269757

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.269757

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