Rents from power for a dissident elite and mass mobilization
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Author | Kemal Kivanç Aköz,Pablo Hernández‐Lagos |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/sjpe.12205 |
RENTS FROM POWER FOR A
DISSIDENT ELITE AND MASS
MOBILIZATION
Kemal Kivanc
ßAk€
oz * and Pablo Hern
andez-Lagos **
ABSTRACT
Popular uprisings in autocracies seldom lead to democratic regimes. We propose a
model that helps explain how rents from powerencourage popular revolts. We study
why citizens would follow a dissident group seeking regime change, if rents from
change accrue only to the group. Our model predicts that higher rents may increase
the incidence of public mobilization because rents facilitate coordination. The
results suggest that cohesive dissident groups may spur seemingly spontaneous mass
mobilizations, even when the mass public know that the dissident group is driven by
greed rather than a genuine desire to halt incumbent’s rent-seeking activities.
II
NTRODUCTION
After massive mobilizations in 2011, three long-standing dictators were over-
thrown in the so-called Arab Spring –Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia,
Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, and Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya. Despite the
seemingly spontaneous mass participation of ordinary citizens in the mobiliza-
tions, three long-standing leaders of dissident groups came into high political
office as a result –Moncef Marzouki from the Congress for the Republic
party of Tunisia, Mohamed Morsi from the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt,
and Mohammed Magariaf from the National Front for the Salvation of
Libya, respectively. Long-standing dissident leaders’ ascension to power as a
result of collective action seems to be a general pattern, at least in the last
decades. Using the Domestic Conflict Event Data from Banks et al. (2015),
for example, we find that members of an established and cohesive dissident
group (legal or illegal) ended up controlling the new regime in 37 of 42 cases
(88%) in which the country’s chief executive was overthrown as a result of
collective action between 1979 and 2012.
1
In none of the remaining five cases,
*National Research University - Higher School of Economics
**New York University Abu Dhabi
1
We refer to ‘collective action’ in this case to each situation in which there is at least one
instance of general strikes (variable ‘Domestic 2’ in Banks et al. 2015), riots (variable
‘Domestic 6’), or anti-government protests (variable ‘Domestic 8’) for each country-year that
have preceded, triggered, or caused the overthrown of the country’s chief executive during
the period 1979–2012. We do not include military coups.
Scottish Journal of Political Economy, DOI: 10.1111/sjpe.12205, Vol. 66, No. 4, September 2019
©2018 Scottish Economic Society.
584
a citizen who had no significant political or economic connections held the
country’s chief position.
2
In this paper, we study why the mass public follow a dissident group (e.g.,
an opposition elite) seeking regime change, if the benefits from change accrue
only to the group. The key idea in our model is that a sizable opposition
group is pivotal if there is a support from a large enough number of individ-
ual citizens. Each individual by him/herself, in contrast, is too small to drive
change. Such a difference in mobilization power between the opposition group
and each individual grants the former a coordinating role. Coordination is at
the core of mass mobilizations because each agent faces strategic uncertainty
as to what others will do. For example, in the Iranian Revolution of 1979,
‘[...]people were constantly guessing at the likelihood that other people would
take to the streets, or go on strike, or demand the overthrow of the regime,’
Kurzman (2009).
Incentives, in the form of net benefits to those who participate in a success-
ful revolution or net costs paid by those who refrain from doing so, are cru-
cial to overcome the protest participation dilemma (Moore, 1995). Just as
incumbents might punish those who took part in a failed revolution, dissident
groups that seize power after a successful revolution might reward former pro-
testers. Dissident groups often seize the rents from power too. Rents come
from appropriation of the state apparatus (Tilly, 1978) or the monopoly of
corruption in states with weak or ‘extractive’ institutions (Acemoglu et al.,
2012). As a result, rents do not distribute equally among those who mobilize.
While the dissident group seizes power, the mass of individuals is often worse
off under the new regime (see, e.g., De Tocqueville, 1866; Kuran, 1989; Shad-
mehr and Bernhardt, 2011).
As rents can be captured once in power, they encourage the dissident group
to mobilize.
3
Thus, higher rents from power signal to the mass public a higher
likelihood of mobilization against the regime. As a result, mass public’s expec-
tations about regime change depend on the incentives of the dissident group
(as well as their individual incentives). Such expectations also depend on
whether rents will be easy to attain. That is, expectations are formed based on
the information players have about the strength of the regime. Our aim is to
study mechanisms through which rents and information affect the mass pub-
lic’s aggressiveness against the current regime. In particular, our model
answers the following questions: Is it the case that rents from power induce
dissident group’s mobilization? If so, do these rents spur mass mobilization?
2
From the remaining five cases, two of them feature a regime in which the incumbent
chief executive swaps its position with another senior member of the incumbent elite (Ecua-
dor 2005; and Yemen 2012); two of them feature no clear chief executive (Germany DR
1989; Somalia 1991); and one of them (Guinea 2007) features a diplomat (who mediated con-
flict between incumbent and opposition elites) coming to power. See Table on the cases of
regime change in Appendix S3 for details. This is consistent with the persistence of autocratic
regimes documented in Magaloni and Kricheli, 2010 and Kricheli et al., 2011.
3
Rents have been shown to be important in the extant literature on armed conflict (see,
e.g., Hirshleifer, 2001; Reed, 2003; Collier and Hoeffler, 2004; Humphreys, 2005; Blattman
and Miguel, 2010.
RENTS FROM POWER 585
Scottish Journal of Political Economy
©2018 Scottish Economic Society
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