The Foundations of Limited Authoritarian Government: Institutions and Power-Sharing in Dictatorships

Carles Boix and Milan Svolik ()
Additional contact information
Carles Boix: Princeton University

Papers from Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy

Abstract: Why do some dictatorships establish institutions that are typically associated with democracy, such as legislatures or political parties? We propose a new theoretical model of institutions and power-sharing in dictatorships. We argue that by facilitating power-sharing, political institutions promote the survival of dictatorships. However, authoritarian power-sharing through institutions is feasible only when it is backed by the crude but credible threat of a rebellion by the dictator's allies. Whereas the allies' political opportunities determine the credibility of the threat of a rebellion, institutions alleviate the commitment and monitoring problems that stem from the secrecy in authoritarian governance. We use both historical and large-N data to assess these new predictions about the relationship between political institutions, dictator tenure, and the concentration of power in dictatorships.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (72)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.princeton.edu/rppe/papers/boixsvolik.pdf
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.princeton.edu/rppe/papers/boixsvolik.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.princeton.edu/rppe/papers/boixsvolik.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://rppe.princeton.edu/papers/boixsvolik.pdf)

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:ecl:prirpe:10-21-2009b

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().