IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oxf/wpaper/701.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Dictators Walking the Mogadishu Line: How Men Become Monsters and Monsters Become Men

Author

Listed:
  • Tim Willems
  • Shaun Larcom
  • Mare Sarr

Abstract

History offers many examples of dictators who worsened their behavior significantly over time (like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe), while there are also cases of dictators who have displayed remarkable improvements (like Jerry Rawlings of Ghana). We show that such mutations can result from rational behavior when the dictator's flow use of repression is complementary to his accumulated stock of wrongdoings. This complementarity gives rise to two steady states (one where repression is low and one where repression is high) and implies that any individual rising to power in this setup has the potential to end up as either a moderate leader, or as a dreaded tyrant. Our model shows that dictators are more likely to derail with higher levels of divertible funds available, for example stemming from fungible aid inflows or from the exploitation of natural resources.

Suggested Citation

  • Tim Willems & Shaun Larcom & Mare Sarr, 2014. "Dictators Walking the Mogadishu Line: How Men Become Monsters and Monsters Become Men," Economics Series Working Papers 701, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:701
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:dfbaae74-d4cd-4a4b-a28b-339296b4fdc3
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lei, Yu-Hsiang & Michaels, Guy, 2014. "Do giant oilfield discoveries fuel internal armed conflicts?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 139-157.
    2. Daron Acemoglu & Davide Ticchi & Andrea Vindigni, 2010. "A Theory of Military Dictatorships," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 1-42, January.
    3. Wintrobe,Ronald, 2000. "The Political Economy of Dictatorship," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521794497, September.
    4. Campante, Filipe R. & Do, Quoc-Anh & Guimaraes, Bernardo, 2012. "Isolated Capital Cities and Misgovernance: Theory and Evidence," Working Paper Series rwp12-058, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    5. Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson, 2001. "A Theory of Political Transitions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 938-963, September.
    6. Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Gerard Roland, 2021. "Culture, institutions and democratization," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 187(1), pages 165-195, April.
    7. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/4eh5eurum690ur8datvh2sb4g9 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson, 2000. "Why Did the West Extend the Franchise? Democracy, Inequality, and Growth in Historical Perspective," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(4), pages 1167-1199.
    9. Silje Aslaksen & Ragnar Torvik, 2006. "A Theory of Civil Conflict and Democracy in Rentier States," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 108(4), pages 571-585, December.
    10. Sonin, Konstantin & Egorov, Georgy, 2005. "The Killing Game: Reputation and Knowledge in Non-Democratic Succession," CEPR Discussion Papers 5092, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Kenneth Rogoff & Anne Sibert, 1988. "Elections and Macroeconomic Policy Cycles," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 55(1), pages 1-16.
    12. Zeira, Joseph, 1987. "Investment as a Process of Search," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(1), pages 204-210, February.
    13. Daron Acemoglu & Mikhail Golosov & Aleh Tsyvinski & Pierre Yared, 2012. "A Dynamic Theory of Resource Wars," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(1), pages 283-331.
    14. Acemoglu,Daron & Robinson,James A., 2009. "Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521671422, September.
    15. Georgy Egorov & Konstantin Sonin, 2005. "The Killing Game: Reputation and Knowledge in Politics of Succession," Game Theory and Information 0505003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Rogoff, Kenneth, 1990. "Equilibrium Political Budget Cycles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 21-36, March.
    17. Orphanides, Athanasios & Zervos, David, 1994. "Optimal consumption dynamics with non-concave habit-forming utility," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 44(1-2), pages 67-72.
    18. Alberto Alesina & Alex Cukierman, 1990. "The Politics of Ambiguity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(4), pages 829-850.
    19. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4hgajj9cf48dladkd9pn9jcj4p is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Timothy Besley & Torsten Persson, 2011. "The Logic of Political Violence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(3), pages 1411-1445.
    21. Antonio Cabrales & Esther Hauk, 2011. "The Quality of Political Institutions and the Curse of Natural Resources," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(551), pages 58-88, March.
    22. Acemoglu, Daron & Robinson, James A., 2000. "Democratization or repression?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(4-6), pages 683-693, May.
    23. James D. Fearon, 2011. "Self-Enforcing Democracy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(4), pages 1661-1708.
    24. Joseph Zeira, 2000. "Informational overshooting, booms and crashes," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Apr.
    25. Gregory D. Hess & Athanasios Orphanides, 2001. "War and Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(4), pages 776-810, August.
    26. Li, Yuan & Gilli, Mario, 2014. "Accountability in Autocracies: The Role of Revolution Threat," Stockholm School of Economics Asia Working Paper Series 2014-30, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm China Economic Research Institute, revised 06 Mar 2014.
    27. Orphanides, Athanasios & Zervos, David, 1995. "Rational Addiction with Learning and Regret," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(4), pages 739-758, August.
    28. Anca M. Cotet & Kevin K. Tsui, 2013. "Oil and Conflict: What Does the Cross Country Evidence Really Show?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 49-80, January.
    29. Eric Maskin & Jean Tirole, 2004. "The Politician and the Judge: Accountability in Government," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 1034-1054, September.
    30. Timothy Besley, 2004. "Joseph Schumpeter Lecture: Paying Politicians: Theory and Evidence," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(2-3), pages 193-215, 04/05.
    31. Tim Willems & Shaun Larcom & Mare Sarr, 2013. "What shall we do with the bad dictator?," Economics Series Working Papers 671, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    32. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/3gffacsuvp8q9p62340u1dgcib is not listed on IDEAS
    33. van der Ploeg, Frederick & Rohner, Dominic, 2012. "War and natural resource exploitation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(8), pages 1714-1729.
    34. Grossman, Herschel I, 1991. "A General Equilibrium Model of Insurrections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 912-921, September.
    35. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4eh5eurum690ur8datvh2sb4g9 is not listed on IDEAS
    36. Timur Kuran, 1989. "Sparks and prairie fires: A theory of unanticipated political revolution," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 61(1), pages 41-74, April.
    37. Roemer, John E, 1985. "Rationalizing Revolutionary Ideology," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(1), pages 85-108, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Mario Gilli & Yuan Li, 2021. "Selectorate’s information and dictator’s accountability," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 38(5), pages 524-542, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mulligan, Casey B. & Tsui, Kevin K., 2015. "Political entry, public policies, and the economy," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 377-397.
    2. Thomas Apolte, 2012. "Why is there no revolution in North Korea?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 150(3), pages 561-578, March.
    3. Alexandra Brausmann & Elise Grieg, 2020. "Resource Discoveries and the Political Survival of Dictators," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 20/345, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    4. Thomas Apolte, "undated". "Why is there no Revolution in North-Korea? The Political Economy of Revolution Revisited," Working Papers 200102, Institute of Spatial and Housing Economics, Munster Universitary.
    5. Bove, Vincenzo & Platteau, Jean-Philippe & Sekeris, Petros G., 2017. "Political repression in autocratic regimes," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 410-428.
    6. Francesco Caselli & Andrea Tesei, 2016. "Resource Windfalls, Political Regimes, and Political Stability," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(3), pages 573-590, July.
    7. Apolte, Thomas, 2015. "Gordon Tullock's theory of dictatorship and revolution," CIW Discussion Papers 2/2015, University of Münster, Center for Interdisciplinary Economics (CIW).
    8. Mehdi Shadmehr & Peter Haschke, 2016. "Youth, Revolution, And Repression," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(2), pages 778-793, April.
    9. Thomas Apolte, 2016. "Gordon Tullock’s theory of revolution and dictatorship," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 158-178, June.
    10. Frode Martin Nordvik, 2014. "Does Oil Promote or Prevent Coups?," Working Papers No 7/2014, Centre for Applied Macro- and Petroleum economics (CAMP), BI Norwegian Business School.
    11. Dorsch, Michael & Dunz, Karl & Maarek, Paul, 2012. "Asymmetric Information and Inefficient Regulation of Firms Under the Threat of Revolution," MPRA Paper 38879, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Dorsch, Michael & Maarek, Paul, 2012. "Inefficient predation, information, and contagious institutional change," MPRA Paper 38759, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Alessandra Bonfiglioli and Gino Gancia, 2010. "The Political Cost of Reforms," Working Papers 507, Barcelona School of Economics.
    14. Daron Acemoglu & Davide Ticchi & Andrea Vindigni, 2010. "A Theory of Military Dictatorships," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 1-42, January.
    15. Roland Hodler, 2018. "The Political Economics Of The Arab Spring," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(2), pages 821-836, April.
    16. Apolte, Thomas, 2015. "Autocracy and the public: Mass revolts, winning coalitions, and policy control in dictatorships," CIW Discussion Papers 5/2015, University of Münster, Center for Interdisciplinary Economics (CIW).
    17. Dorsch, Michael T. & Maarek, Paul, 2018. "Rent extraction, revolutionary threat, and coups in non-democracies," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 1082-1103.
    18. Möller Marie, 2011. "Gefangen im Dilemma? Ein strategischer Ansatz der Wahlund Revolutionsteilnahme / Trapped in Dilemma? A Strategic Approach to explain Participation in Elections and Revolutions," ORDO. Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, De Gruyter, vol. 62(1), pages 425-454, January.
    19. Jørgen Juel Andersen & Martin Nordvik & Andrea Tesei, 2017. "Oil and Civil Conflict: On and Off (Shore)," Working Papers 810, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    20. Raouf Boucekkine & Fabien Prieur & Klarizze Puzon, 2014. "On the Timing of Political Regime Changes: Theory and Application to the Arab Spring," Working Papers 2014.104, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Dictatorship; Repression; Political violence; Resource curse; Learning; Multiple steady states;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • N47 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Africa; Oceania
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:oxf:wpaper:701. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Anne Pouliquen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfeixuk.html .

    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.