From Autocracy to Democracy and Back

The aim of this lecture course is to provide a rigorous framework to study the origins of the institutions that govern public decision making and the consequences that different institutional choices have for socio-economic outcomes. When we analyse public policy – taxation, public spending, regulation etc., – we tend to take the institutions as a given, sometimes assuming some form of liberal democracy and at other times focusing on autocratic institutions. This begs the question: where do the institutions that protect property rights and allocate political entitlements to participate in public policy making come from? 

To answer this question from a Public Choice perspective, the focus of the lectures will be on the incentives that political actors have to build, reform or overthrow institutions and the constraints they face in doing so. This, in turn, depends on the consequences in terms of public policy and socio-economic outcomes, such as inequality and income levels, that different institutional arrangements induce. 

The course will cover five areas:

1.           The “big picture” theories of institutions and development. How did human societies managed to transit from “a primitive social order” with high levels of violence to systems that instilled a measure of social order?This focusses on the basic institutions related to property and collective decision making and draws on work by North, Olson and Acemoglu & Robinson to provide answers.

2.           Democracy and its consequences.  This engages with how decisions are made under democracy and with the consequences in terms of public policy and socio-economic outcomes that flow from that. The focus will be on the theory of the median voter, suffrage reform, and redistribution.

3.           Democracy and its causes. This engages with the democratization puzzle: why would an autocratic elite ever want to share power with broader segments of the society? The focus will be on leading theories of democratization and on the long-standing debate amongst political scientists and economists about the link between democracy, inequality, and economic development.

4.           Autocracy. This engages with decision making under autocracy. The focus will be on Wintrobe’s classical theory of dictatorship and the so-called selectorate theory proposed by political scientists.

5.           Political Transitions. How do political transitions from autocracy to democracy and back again actually happen? This engages with revolutions and coups as two ways in which non-peaceful political transition happens. The focus will be on Tullock and Kuran’s theories of revolution and coups and on new research on foreign influence on democracy and democratic backsliding.

 

Each area will use basic economic theory (optimization and game theory) to develop the theoretical basis for the answers and draw on empirical tests (linear and nonlinear regression techniques) to critically evaluate the explanatory power of the theoretical answers. In short, the course will draw on a mixture of classical and frontier research sampled from the theoretical and the empirical literature.