The Logic of Political Survival

The Logic of Political Survival
Author: Bruce Bueno De Mesquita
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 602
Release: 2005-01-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262261774

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The authors of this ambitious book address a fundamental political question: why are leaders who produce peace and prosperity turned out of office while those who preside over corruption, war, and misery endure? Considering this political puzzle, they also answer the related economic question of why some countries experience successful economic development and others do not. The authors construct a provocative theory on the selection of leaders and present specific formal models from which their central claims can be deduced. They show how political leaders allocate resources and how institutions for selecting leaders create incentives for leaders to pursue good and bad public policy. They also extend the model to explain the consequences of war on political survival. Throughout the book, they provide illustrations from history, ranging from ancient Sparta to Vichy France, and test the model against statistics gathered from cross-national data. The authors explain the political intuition underlying their theory in nontechnical language, reserving formal proofs for chapter appendixes. They conclude by presenting policy prescriptions based on what has been demonstrated theoretically and empirically.

The Logic of Political Survival

The Logic of Political Survival
Author: Bruce Bueno De Mesquita
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 556
Release: 2005-01-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780262524407

Download The Logic of Political Survival Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The authors of this ambitious book address a fundamental political question: why are leaders who produce peace and prosperity turned out of office while those who preside over corruption, war, and misery endure? Considering this political puzzle, they also answer the related economic question of why some countries experience successful economic development and others do not. The authors construct a provocative theory on the selection of leaders and present specific formal models from which their central claims can be deduced. They show how political leaders allocate resources and how institutions for selecting leaders create incentives for leaders to pursue good and bad public policy. They also extend the model to explain the consequences of war on political survival. Throughout the book, they provide illustrations from history, ranging from ancient Sparta to Vichy France, and test the model against statistics gathered from cross-national data. The authors explain the political intuition underlying their theory in nontechnical language, reserving formal proofs for chapter appendixes. They conclude by presenting policy prescriptions based on what has been demonstrated theoretically and empirically.

The Logic of Political Survival in Turkey

The Logic of Political Survival in Turkey
Author: Çaglar Ezikoglu
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2021-02-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1793627258

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This book aims at exploring the logic of political survival in Turkish politics studying the case of the AKP and using evidence from elite interviews, party documents, public speeches, and developments and changes for exploring AKP’s political survival in the chapters. These evidences indicate that there are four independent variables of dependent variable which is AKP’s political survival; -- the legitimization of AKP’s conservatism (2002-2007), AKP’s power struggle with Kemalist elites (2007-2011), AKP’s populism and authoritarianism (2011-2014) and the instrumentalization of Islamism and nationalism under Erdogan’s leadership (2014-2018) -- within the AKP’s four terms. In other words, this research offers a cause-and-effect mechanism between the four different policy approaches of the AKP’s four periods and the AKP’s political survival. Indeed, the AKP has been the most successful political party at the point of ensuring political survival throughout its 16-year rule. In the literature, there are few studies analyzing the 16-year rule of AKP government integrally. As a result of this limitation, the original contribution of this research is that it offers a holistic approach of the AKP government between 2002 and 2018 with using the concept of political survival which is not explored for the AKP case in the literature.

The Dictator's Handbook

The Dictator's Handbook
Author: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
Publisher: Public Affairs
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2011-09-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 161039044X

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Explains the theory of political survival, particularly in cases of dictators and despotic governments, arguing that political leaders seek to stay in power using any means necessary, most commonly by attending to the interests of certain coalitions.

The Logic of Violence in Civil War

The Logic of Violence in Civil War
Author: Stathis N. Kalyvas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 20
Release: 2006-05-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 113945692X

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By analytically decoupling war and violence, this book explores the causes and dynamics of violence in civil war. Against the prevailing view that such violence is an instance of impenetrable madness, the book demonstrates that there is logic to it and that it has much less to do with collective emotions, ideologies, and cultures than currently believed. Kalyvas specifies a novel theory of selective violence: it is jointly produced by political actors seeking information and individual civilians trying to avoid the worst but also grabbing what opportunities their predicament affords them. Violence, he finds, is never a simple reflection of the optimal strategy of its users; its profoundly interactive character defeats simple maximization logics while producing surprising outcomes, such as relative nonviolence in the 'frontlines' of civil war.

The Political Logic of Poverty Relief

The Political Logic of Poverty Relief
Author: Alberto Diaz-Cayeros
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2016-02-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1107140285

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The Political Logic of Poverty Relief places electoral politics and institutional design at the core of poverty alleviation. The authors develop a theory with applications to Mexico about how elections shape social programs aimed at aiding the poor. They also assess whether voters reward politicians for targeted poverty alleviation programs.

Ethnic Politics and State Power in Africa

Ethnic Politics and State Power in Africa
Author: Philip Roessler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2016-12-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1107176077

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This book models the trade-off that rulers of weak, ethnically-divided states face between coups and civil war. Drawing evidence from extensive field research in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo combined with statistical analysis of most African countries, it develops a framework to understand the causes of state failure.

Why Communism Did Not Collapse

Why Communism Did Not Collapse
Author: Martin K. Dimitrov
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2013-07-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1107035538

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Addresses the durability of communist autocracies in Eastern Europe and Asia, the longest-lasting type of non-democratic regime to emerge after World War I.

Expert Political Judgment

Expert Political Judgment
Author: Philip E. Tetlock
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2017-08-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1400888816

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Since its original publication, Expert Political Judgment by New York Times bestselling author Philip Tetlock has established itself as a contemporary classic in the literature on evaluating expert opinion. Tetlock first discusses arguments about whether the world is too complex for people to find the tools to understand political phenomena, let alone predict the future. He evaluates predictions from experts in different fields, comparing them to predictions by well-informed laity or those based on simple extrapolation from current trends. He goes on to analyze which styles of thinking are more successful in forecasting. Classifying thinking styles using Isaiah Berlin's prototypes of the fox and the hedgehog, Tetlock contends that the fox--the thinker who knows many little things, draws from an eclectic array of traditions, and is better able to improvise in response to changing events--is more successful in predicting the future than the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, toils devotedly within one tradition, and imposes formulaic solutions on ill-defined problems. He notes a perversely inverse relationship between the best scientific indicators of good judgement and the qualities that the media most prizes in pundits--the single-minded determination required to prevail in ideological combat. Clearly written and impeccably researched, the book fills a huge void in the literature on evaluating expert opinion. It will appeal across many academic disciplines as well as to corporations seeking to develop standards for judging expert decision-making. Now with a new preface in which Tetlock discusses the latest research in the field, the book explores what constitutes good judgment in predicting future events and looks at why experts are often wrong in their forecasts.

Democracy, Dictatorship, and Default

Democracy, Dictatorship, and Default
Author: Cameron Ballard-Rosa
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2020-08-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108875319

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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that, in the coming years, more than fifty countries are at risk of default. Yet we understand little about the political determinants of this decision to renege on promises to international creditors. This book develops and tests a unified theory of how domestic politics explains sovereign default across dictatorships and democracies. Professor Ballard-Rosa argues that both democratic and autocratic governments will choose to default when it is necessary for political survival; however, regime type has a significant impact on what specific kinds of threats leaders face. While dictatorships are concerned with avoiding urban riots, democratic governments are concerned with losing elections, in particular the support of rural voting blocs. Using cross-national data and historical case studies, Ballard-Rosa shows that leaders under each regime type are more likely to default when doing so allows them to keep funding costly policies supporting critical bases of support.