Insurgency and Credible Commitment in Autocracies and Democracies

The inability of political actors to make credible promises to broad segments of society—a previously unexplored determinant of civil war—causes both elected and unelected governments to pursue public policies that leave citizens worse off and more prone to revolt. Noncredible political actors are a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author:	Keefer, Philip
Format:	Journal Article
Published:	World Bank 2012
Subjects:	armed conflict civil war conflict counterinsurgency International Bank Peace Peace Research rebel Reconstruction violent conflict
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4471

id	okr-10986-4471
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-44712021-04-23T14:02:18Z Insurgency and Credible Commitment in Autocracies and Democracies Keefer, Philip armed conflict civil war conflict counterinsurgency International Bank Peace Peace Research rebel Reconstruction violent conflict The inability of political actors to make credible promises to broad segments of society—a previously unexplored determinant of civil war—causes both elected and unelected governments to pursue public policies that leave citizens worse off and more prone to revolt. Noncredible political actors are also less able to build counterinsurgency capacity. Popular dissatisfaction with rulers reduces the costs to counterinsurgents of overthrowing regimes, discouraging rulers from building counterinsurgency capacity in the first place; lack of credibility prevents rulers from writing contracts with counterinsurgents that maximize counterinsurgency effort. Empirical tests across numerous subsamples using various measures of political credibility support the conclusion that broad political credibility ranks at least as high as social fractionalization and natural resource rents as a cause of conflict. 2012-03-30T07:12:36Z 2012-03-30T07:12:36Z 2008-01-30 Journal Article World Bank Economic Review 1564-698X http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4471 CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank Journal Article Guatemala Uganda Lebanon Sri Lanka Macedonia, former Yugoslav Republic of North Macedonia (Formerly the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia)
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
topic	armed conflict civil war conflict counterinsurgency International Bank Peace Peace Research rebel Reconstruction violent conflict
spellingShingle	armed conflict civil war conflict counterinsurgency International Bank Peace Peace Research rebel Reconstruction violent conflict Keefer, Philip Insurgency and Credible Commitment in Autocracies and Democracies
geographic_facet	Guatemala Uganda Lebanon Sri Lanka Macedonia, former Yugoslav Republic of North Macedonia (Formerly the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia)
description	The inability of political actors to make credible promises to broad segments of society—a previously unexplored determinant of civil war—causes both elected and unelected governments to pursue public policies that leave citizens worse off and more prone to revolt. Noncredible political actors are also less able to build counterinsurgency capacity. Popular dissatisfaction with rulers reduces the costs to counterinsurgents of overthrowing regimes, discouraging rulers from building counterinsurgency capacity in the first place; lack of credibility prevents rulers from writing contracts with counterinsurgents that maximize counterinsurgency effort. Empirical tests across numerous subsamples using various measures of political credibility support the conclusion that broad political credibility ranks at least as high as social fractionalization and natural resource rents as a cause of conflict.
format	Journal Article
author	Keefer, Philip
author_facet	Keefer, Philip
author_sort	Keefer, Philip
title	Insurgency and Credible Commitment in Autocracies and Democracies
title_short	Insurgency and Credible Commitment in Autocracies and Democracies
title_full	Insurgency and Credible Commitment in Autocracies and Democracies
title_fullStr	Insurgency and Credible Commitment in Autocracies and Democracies
title_full_unstemmed	Insurgency and Credible Commitment in Autocracies and Democracies
title_sort	insurgency and credible commitment in autocracies and democracies
publisher	World Bank
publishDate	2012
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4471
_version_	1764391509390524416

Insurgency and Credible Commitment in Autocracies and Democracies

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