10 20 Chapter 10 Types of dictatorships A monarchy relies on kin and family network to come power and stay in power o Royal family determines succession Military dictatorships are often ruled by committee of Junta o the size of the junta vanes depending on ruler o guardians of the national interest o biggest threat to stability is more military coups civilian dictatorship relies on regime parties or personality cults to stay in power o ex china and north Korea A dominant party dictatorship is where one party dominates office and control over o communist party PRI in Mexico A personalistic dictator is where the leader controls all policy decisions and selection of policy regime o weaken others to present challenges o weak parties military press o strong secret police o cult of personality Personality cults help leaders hold on to power by citizen s beliefs electoral authoritarianism is where leaders hold elections and tolerate variation in elections in dictatorships o competition o suffrage o competitiveness o electoral system Selectorate Theory office o Assumes that political leaders are motivated by the desire to gain and maintain even if they have other goals political competition forces them to pursue and maintain office o whether we observe that competition or not and someone always wants leader s position o office seeking explains much of leaders behavior leaders choose different kinds of outcome economic performance provision of public goods corruption war and conflict good economic performance does not necessarily result in longevity in o some environments encourage leaders to behave in way that benefits society power What explains performance This theory characterizes governments by o size of the electorate o size of their winning coalition The selectorate s is the set of people who can play a role in selecting leaders Winning coalition co includes those people whose support is necessary for the leader to stay in power In order to stay in power leaders have to keep winning coalition o they can achieve this by public goods or private goods public consumed by everyone private consumed only by winning coalition Public Vs Private in selectorate theory o whether leaders distributes public or private goods depend on sre of WC leaders prefer to buy WC with private goods better at maintaining loyalty not always possible o As sre of WC increases the share of private goods decline o if W gets big enough the share of private gets really small in this case members prefer public goods o when W is small leaders will want to provide private goods instead o when w is large leaders will want to provide public goods rather than preserve o in addition to goods provision leader must pick a tax rate Determines how much money the leader has to pay for the provision of public and private o At the same time challenges propose a bundle of public private goods o individuals in W who are disgruntled and must weigh the cost and benefits of Loyalty Norm defecting individuals who deflect o o the risk that a member races when thinking about defecting is a ration of W S w s represents the probability that a member of the selectorate will be in As a result it indicates the probability that someone who defects will be in WC the next leaders WC o systems w a small w s are rigged election dictatorships o systems w a large w s are democracies monarchies and military juntas o the loyalty norm affects the performance of leaders if there is a strong loyalty norm small w s then leaders don t need to pay members of W to keep loyal as a result leaders can engage in kleptocracy and corruption these leaders have little incentive to produce good public policy it doesn t help them stay in power o when w s is large members of the WC will be less loyal thus leaders can t hoard all the resources for themselves and need to demonstrate competence performance should be better in large W s systems than small W s systems Bottom Line o good things happen when w is large and w s is small o midline w is small and w s is large o Bad w is small and w s is small leaders like to set up political system with small w and small w s members of WC like small W are large W s members of selectorate large W and large W s 10 22 Chapter 11 Preferences of committee members o A Condorcet winner is the option that beats all other options in pair wise comparisons Condorcet s Paradox A set of individuals rational preferences aggregate to a rational preference ordering via majority rule An agenda setter decides the order of the voting by deciding which options are compared first agenda is Council members should think about the strategic implications of first round votes If the o I v D then winner is pitted against C Then thinking strategically means thinking o If I in first round what happens in second round o If D wins in the first round what happens in the second round Policy may be more stable than we would expect because some actors have the ability set If this is true then stability has been achieved at the sacrifice of fairness the agenda the agenda setter is effectively a dictator Allows voters to list a complete preference ordering and then assigns a value to each item in the individual s preference ordering that reflects their preferences The alternative with the most points wins No pair wise comparison so no cycling Institutions Affect Outcomes o They change the rules for how a group decides voting methods Identify agenda setters o They change the options available to people o Sometimes e g the Borda Count just the introduction of an alternative nobody wants can change the outcome o But in doing so they also bring stable outcomes Stability through restriction on preferences o We characterize each person s preferences according to their a numerical scaling in which higher number stand for higher positions in an individual s preference ordering Median Voter Theorem o If in a contest between two alternatives there are an odd number of votes who all vote sincerely with single peaked preferences on a one dimensional policy space o Then the proposal matching the ideal point of the median voter will defeat all other alternatives Stability through restriction on preferences o The median s ideal point beats all other proposals in a pair wise comparison Their most preferred option is the Condorcet winner Two Dimensional Voting o Representatives of three societal groups Capital Labor and Agriculture vote on how to divide a pot of subsidies o
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