Insurgency and Credible Commitment in Autocracies and Democracies
This paper suggests a new factor that makes civil war more likely: the inability of political actors to make credible promises to broad segments of society. Lacking this ability, both elected and unelected governments pursue public policies that le...
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2007/04/7499620/insurgency-credible-commitment-autocracies-democracies http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7012 |
| Summary: | This paper suggests a new factor that
makes civil war more likely: the inability of political
actors to make credible promises to broad segments of
society. Lacking this ability, both elected and unelected
governments pursue public policies that leave citizens less
well-off and more prone to revolt. At the same time, these
actors have a reduced ability to build an anti-insurgency
capacity in the first place, since they are less able to
prevent anti-insurgents from themselves mounting coups. But
while reducing the risk of conflict overall, increasing
credibility can, over some range, worsen the effects of
natural resources and ethnic fragmentation on civil war.
Empirical tests using various measures of political
credibility support these conclusions. |
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