Dynamics of Political Systems

Lukas Buchheim and Robert Ulbricht

No 14-464, TSE Working Papers from Toulouse School of Economics (TSE)

Abstract: We develop a quantitative theory of repeated political transitions driven by revolts and reforms. In the model, the beliefs of disenfranchised citizens play a key role in determining revolutionary pressure, which in interaction with preemptive reforms determines regime dynamics. We estimate the model structurally, targeting key moments of the data. The estimated model generates a process of political transitions that looks remarkably close to the data, replicating the empirical shape of transition hazards, the frequency of revolts relative to reforms, the distribution of newly established regime types after revolts and reforms, and the unconditional distribution over regime types. Using the estimated model, we also explore circumstances of successful democratization, finding that the sentiment of political outsiders is key for creating a window of opportunity, whereas the scope of the initial democratic reform is key for the survival of young democracies.

Keywords: Democratic reforms; regime dynamics; revolts; structural estimation; transition hazards (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 D78 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-02, Revised 2018-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.tse-fr.eu/sites/default/files/TSE/docu ... /2015/wp_tse_464.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Dynamics of Political Systems (2015)
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:tse:wpaper:27883

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in TSE Working Papers from Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().