Buying Support and Buying Time
Published in: International Studies Quarterly, 55(3): 625-646. September 2011. PDF
History provides many examples of benevolent dictators who become increasingly repressive and new democracies that take years to improve public welfare. I account for this temporal variation in public goods provision by considering how regime consolidation changes leaders' incentives to provide public goods. To stay in office, all leaders must maintain a sufficient level of support from those possessing the power to replace the leader via institutional processes. Leaders of unconsolidated regimes face additional threats posed by viable extra-institutional challengers, such as coup plotters and revolutionaries. Tests on public goods spanning political freedoms, government expenditures, education, and health generally suggest leaders' incentives for public goods provision change as regime consolidation insulates leaders from these extra-institutional threats to power. States with inclusive institutions (i.e. democracies) spend more on public goods as they consolidate and become less vulnerable to elite demands. Exclusive regimes (i.e. non-democracies) spend more on public goods when they are vulnerable to the excluded masses, but become increasingly repressive as they become insulated from popular uprisings. Consequently, consolidation magnifies the positive effect of democracy on public goods provision. These findings have important implications for the literatures on public goods provision and regime survival.
Repression or Appeasement? Predicting Responses to Domestic Crises
Preparing for Submission | Presented at APSA 2010 PDF
When faced with threats like coup and rebellion, why do leaders sometimes respond with repression and why do they sometimes attempt to appease their challengers? This paper evaluates this important question by juxtaposing appeasement and repression as alternate strategies a non-leader might use to secure her regime from the threats of viable challengers. Appeasement may be an attractive strategy for deterring challengers because it increases the challengers' opportunity costs for conflict. Repression might also be effective because it decreases the probability of a government defeat should the challenger opt to attack the state. The formal model specified here suggests leaders decide between repression and appeasement by considering (1) the relative cost-effectiveness of each strategy and (2) the strength of the challenger relative to the state. The hypotheses derived from the model are tested with an analysis of government responses to domestic threats in non-democratic states. The results begin to explain where and when non-democracies are likely to be benevolent or repressive, which allows for more specific predictions about where severe repression is likely to occur or where human rights might start to decline in seemingly benevolent non-democracies.
Benevolence Pays: The Stabilizing Effect of Public Goods on Non-Democratic Regimes
Preparing for Submission
Extant civil war research notes that non-democratic states are at an elevated risk of conflict relative to democratic states. This paper examines government spending by fragile non-democracies to determine whether non-democratic leaders can use fiscal policy to successfully reduce the risk of civil war. A time-series cross-sectional analysis spanning 1960 to 2000 suggests benevolence pays for weak non-democratic regimes. Those that spend more on public goods like education and social welfare can decrease the likelihood of civil war by as much as 50%. This result is robust across many measures of public goods provision.
Resources, Commitment Problems, and Civil War
With Scott Wolford (Univ of Texas) | Revise-and-Resubmit PDF
Civil conflicts begin when expectations of rising government strength render present promises incredible and rebels find war more profitable than intolerable bargains in the future. We analyze a simple game-theoretic model of the commitment problem in bargaining between a government and a rebel group that emphasizes the role of expectations over the future shifts in power. To test the model's main prediction, we leverage data on announced oil deposits as an indicator of the state's expected future bargaining power. We show that the expectation of increased oil revenues in the future leads to an increased probability of civil conflict, but only when announced reserves account for a sufficiently large increase over the existing level of wealth.
Minority Language Recognition under Dictatorship
With Jennifer Gandhi (Emory Univ) and Amy Liu (Univ of Colorado) | Under Review PDF
What are the linguistic effects of electoral institutions under dictatorship? In this paper, we argue dictatorships that allow for multiparty competition and legislative elections are most likely to recognize linguistic diversity than other types of dictatorships. We test this argument using a newly-constructed measure of language-in-education on two samples. The first sample includes all dictatorships 1945-2000; the second, all majority-minority dyads in Asian dictatorships 1980-2000. The results suggest a significant and robust relationship between electoral institutions under dictatorships and minority language recognition.
Drought-Driven Conflict: Climate Change, Political Unrest, and Effective Adaptive Policy in sub-Saharan Africa
With Patrick Keys (Stockholm Environment Institute) | Under Review PDF
As global temperatures rise, so does concern that climate change will lead to an inevitable increase in conflict over water, food, and other vital resources. These concerns are perhaps most pronounced in sub-Saharan nations, where climate forecast models predict abnormal fluctuations in temperature and precipitation to be especially severe. This study uses drought severity data to predict drought-induced conflicts and to identify plausible adaptive strategies that might be used to reduce the risk of war in periods of severe drought. We show that drought is most likely to cause conflict where governments fail to maintain the domestic production of cereal grains. Furthermore, we find cereal grain imports generally fail to reduce the incidence of civil war in drought-stricken states. While drought will continue to threaten African security in the twenty-first century, conflict is not inevitable. Drought-adaptation strategies are most likely to prevent political instability where governments can focus on maintaining domestic grain production.
Contact
Office: Ketchum 121A
Fall Hrs: 4:45-6:00 TR
curtis.bell@colorado.edu
Curtis Bell
Dept of Political Science
UCB 333
Boulder, CO 80309
Research Interests
Civil War
Transnational Causes of State Failure
Political Economy of State Failure
Relations with Non-Democratic and Failing Regimes
Non-Democratic Governance
Rebel Recruitment and Motivation
Selected Conference Presentations
"Drought-Driven Conflict: Climate Change, Political Unrest, and Effective Adaptive Policy in sub-Saharan Africa" With Patrick Keys. African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes. Durban, South Africa. September 2011.
"Minority Language Recognition under Dictatorship." With Jennifer Gandhi and Amy Liu. Midwest Political Science Association. Chicago, IL. April 2011.
"Repression or Appeasement? Rival Responses to Domestic Crises." American Political Science Association. Washington, DC. September 2010.
"Buying Support and Buying Time: The Effect of Regime Consolidation on Public Goods Provision." International Studies Association. New Orleans, LA. February 2010.
"Public Goods and the Occurrence and Re-Occurrence of Civil War." With Rand Blimes. Peace Science Society International. Claremont, CA. October 2008.
"Toward a Multi-Dimensional Measure of Regime Similarity." Society for Political Methodology (PolMeth). Ann Arbor, MI. July 2008.
"Institutional Similarity and Interstate Peace." Midwest Political Science Association. Chicago, IL. April 2008.