IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v98y2004i01p17-33_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Paradox of “Warlord” Democracy: A Theoretical Investigation

Author

Listed:
  • LEONARD, WANTCHEKON

Abstract

Political theorists from Machiavelli to Huntington have denied the possibility of popular government arising out of the chaos of civil war, instead prescribing an intermediate stage of one-man rule by a Prince, Leviathan, or a military dictator. Based on recent empirical evidence of post-civil war democratization in El Salvador, Mozambique, and elsewhere, I show that democracy can arise directly from anarchy. Predatory warring factions choose the citizenry and democratic procedures over a Leviathan when (1) their economic interests depend on productive investment by the citizens, (2) citizens' political preferences ensure that power allocation will be less biased under democracy than under a Leviathan, and (3) there is an external agency (e.g., the United Nations) that mediates and supervises joint disarmament and state-building. Ultimately, I discuss the implications of this argument for the basic intuitions of classical political theory and contemporary social theory regarding democratization and authoritarianism.

Suggested Citation

  • Leonard, Wantchekon, 2004. "The Paradox of “Warlord” Democracy: A Theoretical Investigation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 98(1), pages 17-33, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:98:y:2004:i:01:p:17-33_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055404000978/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eric Mvukiyehe, 2018. "Promoting Political Participation in War-torn Countries," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 62(8), pages 1686-1726, September.
    2. Chang, Alex Chuan-hsien, 2018. "How do Asian values constrain public support for redistribution?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 139-150.
    3. Andrew T. Young, 2016. "What does it take for a roving bandit settle down? Theory and an illustrative history of the Visigoths," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 168(1), pages 75-102, July.
    4. Georgy Egorov & Konstantin Sonin, 2011. "Dictators And Their Viziers: Endogenizing The Loyalty–Competence Trade‐Off," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(5), pages 903-930, October.
    5. Armey, Laura E. & McNab, Robert M., 2012. "Democratization and civil war," MPRA Paper 42460, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Thomas Edward Flores & Irfan Nooruddin, 2009. "Democracy under the Gun Understanding Postconflict Economic Recovery," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 53(1), pages 3-29, February.
    7. Christopher Blattman, 2008. "From Violence to Voting: War and political participation in Uganda," Working Papers 138, Center for Global Development.
    8. Libman, Alexander, 2008. "Government-business relations in post-Soviet space: The case of Central Asia," MPRA Paper 11874, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. S. Guriev & G. Egorov & K. Sonin, 2007. "Media Freedom, Bureaucratic Incentives, and the Resource Curse," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 4.
    10. Konstantin Sonin & Georgy Egorov, 2011. "Incumbency Advantage in Nondemocratic Elections," 2011 Meeting Papers 417, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    11. Wagner, Matthew L, 2016. "The civil war puzzle revisited: The use of post-conflict elections as part of peace agreements," International Journal of Development and Conflict, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, vol. 6(1), pages 1-24.
    12. Desha M. Girod, 2015. "Reducing postconflict coup risk: The low windfall coup-proofing hypothesis," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 32(2), pages 153-174, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:98:y:2004:i:01:p:17-33_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.