Centralized institutions and cascades
Jared Rubin
MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany
Abstract:
Why do sudden and massive social, economic, and political changes occur when and where they do? Are there institutional preconditions that encourage such changes when present and discourage such changes when absent? I employ a general model which suggests that cascades which induce massive equilibrium changes are more likely to occur in regimes with centralized coercive power, defined as the ability to impose more than one type of sanction (economic, legal, political, social, or religious). Centralized authorities are better able to suppress subversive actions when external shocks are small, as citizens have little incentive to incur numerous types of sanctions. However, citizens are also more likely to lie about their internal preferences in such regimes (e.g., falsely declare loyalty to an oppressive government), entailing that large shocks are more likely to trigger a cascade when authority is centralized. The model is applied to the severity of protests that followed austerity measures taken in developing nations since the 1970s.
Keywords: Institutions; centralization; cascades; austerity; protests; revolution; preference falsification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 D74 H11 H89 K19 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-07-07
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)
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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/32364/1/MPRA_paper_32364.pdf original version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/34293/3/MPRA_paper_34293.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
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Journal Article: Centralized institutions and cascades (2014) 
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:32364
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