Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-44mx8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-21T06:59:58.203Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Mancur Olson
Mancur Olson
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Under anarchy, uncoordinated competitive theft by “roving bandits” destroys the incentive to invest and produce, leaving little for either the population or the bandits. Both can be better off if a bandit sets himself up as a dictator—a “stationary bandit” who monopolizes and rationalizes theft in the form of taxes. A secure autocrat has an encompassing interest in his domain that leads him to provide a peaceful order and other public goods that increase productivity. Whenever an autocrat expects a brief tenure, it pays him to confiscate those assets whose tax yield over his tenure is less than their total value. This incentive plus the inherent uncertainty of succession in dictatorships imply that autocracies will rarely have good economic performance for more than a generation. The conditions necessary for a lasting democracy are the same necessary for the security of property and contract rights that generates economic growth.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 87 , Issue 3 , September 1993 , pp. 567 - 576
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Banfield, Edward. 1958. The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Carniero, Robert L. 1970. “A Theory of the Origin of the State.” Science 169:733–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clague, Christopher, and Rausser, Gordon, eds. 1992. The Emergence of Market Economies in Eastern Europe. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
DeLong, J. Bradford, and Schleifer, Andrei. 1992. “Princes and Merchants: European City Growth before the Industrial Revolution.” Harvard University. Mimeo.Google Scholar
Hardin, Russell. 1982. Collective Action. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobhouse, L. T., Wheeler, G. C., and Ginsberg, M.. 1965. The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples London: Routledge & K. Paul.Google Scholar
Kalduhn, Ibn. 1967. The Mugaddimah. Trans. Rosenthal, Franz. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kiser, Edgar, and Barzel, Yoram. 1991. “Origins of Democracy in England.” Journal of Rationality and Society 3:396 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lake, David A. 1992. “Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War.” American Political Science Review 86:24–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murrell, Peter, and Olson, Mancur. 1991. “The Devolution of Centrally Planned Economies.” Journal of Comparative Economics 15:239–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
North, Douglass. 1981. Growth and Structural Change. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
North, Douglass, and Thomas, Robert. 1973. The Rise of the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1967. “Some Historic Variation in Property Institutions.” Princeton University. Mimeo.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1982. The Rise and Decline of Nations. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1986. “A Theory of the Incentives Facing Political Organizations: Neo-corporatism and the Hegemonic State.” International Political Science Review 7:165–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1990. “The Logic of Collective Action in Soviet-type Societies.” Journal of Soviet Nationalities 1(2): 8–33.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1993. “From Communism to a Market Democracy.” Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector. Typescript.Google Scholar
Sandier, Todd. 1992. Collective Action: Theory and Applications. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press Google Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph. “The Crisis of the Tax State.” In Joseph A. Schumpeter: The Economics and Sociology of Capitalism, ed. Swedberg, Richard. Princeton: Princeton University Press CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheridan, James E. 1966. Chinese Warlord: The Career of Feng Yu-hsiang. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.