Suchergebnisse

Although much of the world still lives today, as always, under dictatorship, the behaviour of these regimes and of their leaders often appears irrational and mysterious. In The Political Economy of Dictatorship, Ronald Wintrobe uses rational choice theory to model dictatorships: their strategies for accumulating power, the constraints on their behavior, and why they are often more popular than is commonly accepted. The book explores both the politics and the economics of dictatorships, and the interaction between them. The questions addressed include: What determines the repressiveness of a regime? Can political authoritarianism be 'good' for the economy? After the fall, who should be held responsible for crimes against human rights? The book contains many applications, including chapters on Nazi Germany, Soviet Communism, South Africa under apartheid, the ancient Roman Empire and Pinochet's Chile. It also provides a guide to the policies which should be followed by the democracies towards dictatorships

In this paper I take a 'public choice' approach to the problem of tax evasion. Moreover, I assume that people will be more willing to pay their taxes when they trust the government more. Thus, we would expect that tax evasion would be lower, ceteris paribus, the more responsive governments are to their citizens' wishes. Finally, since the level of tax evasion depends on the trust of citizens that other citizens pay their taxes, it follows that there are multiple equilibria, which can be broadly classified into two: one in which, broadly speaking, people assume that others are paying and so most of them also pay, and the other in which the opposite is true.

SUMMARYThe quantity theory of money is undoubtedly the best known, and some would argue, the best established proposition in macroeeonomic theory. No comparable generalizations exist in the literature on warfare. Indeed, most theories of international conflict (e.g., the balance of power or hegemonic theories) are exclusively concerned with the distribution of power among nations, not the absolute level of the stock of weaponry. However, just as money is central to exchange, weapons are central to force or violence. In this paper, I suggest that there is a close analogy between the role of money in macroeeonomic behaviour and the role of weapons in conflictual behaviour, and exploit this analogy to produce a simple quantity theory of weaponry. The analysis developed here suggests that this theory is literally true only in a very special case, and that, in general, increases in weaponry stocks may result in more or less international aggression. However, I suggest that the case where the rate at which weapons are used remains constant as stocks are changed is a useful benchmark, against which the conflicting forces of deterrance (which reduces aggression) and crisis instability (which increases it) can be evaluated. In general, the paper suggests that the relationships between money and prices embodied in the quantity theory can be used to understand behaviour in entirely different contexts, of which perhaps international relations is only one example.ZUSAMMENFASSUNGDie Quantitätstheorie des Geldes ist zweifellos die bekannteste und nach Meinung einiger die etablierteste These in der makroökonomischen Theorie. In der Literatur über Kriegsführung existiert keine vergleichbare Verallgemeinerung. Tatsächlich befassen sich die meisten Theorien zu internau'onalen Konflikten (z.B. Theorie des Gleichgewichts der Kräfte oder Vorherrschaftsthe‐orien) ausschliesslich mit der Machtverteilung unter Nationen, jedoch nicht mit der absoluten Höhe der Waffenbestände. Genauso wie jedoch Geld zentral für den Tausch ist, sind Waffen auch das zentrale Element bei Kraft und Gewalt. In diesem Aufsatz weise ich darauf hin, dass es eine enge Analogie zwischen der Rolle des Geldes im makroökonomischen Verhalten und der Rolle von Waffen im Konfliktverhalten gibt. Diese Analogie nütze ich edazu aus, eine einfache Quantitätstheorie der Waffen zu erstellen. Die hier entwickelte Analyse deutet darauf hin, dass diese Theorie nur in einem ganz besonderen Fall wirklich wahr ist und dass Erhöhungen der Waffenbestände im allgemeinen zu mehr oder weniger internationalen Aggressionen führen können.Es gibt eine Rate, bei der Waffen beniitzt werden. Der Fall, bei dem diese Rate konstant bleibt, während die Bestände verändert werden, ist meiner Meinung nach eine nützliche Vergleichsmarke, an der die gegensätzlichen Kräfte der Abschreckung (die Aggressionen reduziert) und der Krisen‐instabilität (die Aggressionen erhöht) gemessen werden können. Allgemein sagt dieser Aufsatz, dass die Beziehungen zwischen Geld und Preisen innerhalb der Quantitätstheorie dazu verwendet werden können, urn Verhaltensweisen in ganz anderen Kontexten, von denen internationale Beziehungen vielleicht nur ein Beispiel sind, zu verstehen.RÉSUMÉLa théorie quantitative de la monnaie est indubitablement la mieux connue, et certains ľaffirment, la meilleure proposition fondée de la théorie macroéconomique. Aucune généralisation comparable n'existe dans la litérature consacrée à la guerre. En effet, la plupart des théories sur les conflits intemationaux (par ex. ľéquilibre du pouvoir ou les théories hégémoniques) s'intéressent exclusivement à la distribution du pouvoir entre les nations, et non au niveau absolu du stock ďarmement. Cependant, tout comme la monnaie est ľélément central dans les échanges, les armes forment ľélément principal de la force ou de la violence. Dans cet article, je suggère qu'il y a une analogie directe entre le rǒle de la monnaie dans le fonctionnement macroéconomique et le rǒle des armes dans les comportements de conflit armé, et exploite cette analogie pour proposer une théorie quantitative simple de rarmement. ľanalyse, dévéloppée ici, suggère que cette théorie est littéralement vraie seulement dans un cas très particulier, et que, en général, les augmentations des stocks ďarmes doivent aboutir à plus ou moins ďagression internationale. Toutefois, je montre que le cas, où le taux ďutilisation des armes demeure constant, les stocks variant, est une borne utile, vis à vis de laquelle les forces de dissuasion (qui réduisent ľaggression) et les crises ďinstabilityé (qui ľaugmentent) peuvent ětre évaluées. De manière général, ľarticle suggère que les relations, contenues dans la théorie quantitative entre la monnaie et les prix, peuvent ětre utilisées pour comprendre le comportement dans diftérents contextes, dont les relations internationales n'en sont qu'un exemple.

I use basic tools of economic theory to construct a simple model of the behavior of dictatorships. Two extreme cases are considered: a "tin-pot" dictatorship, in which the dictator wishes only to minimize the costs of remaining in power in order to collect the fruits of office (palaces, Mercedes-Benzes, Swiss bank accounts), and a "totalitarian" dictatorship, whose leader maximizes power over the population. I show that the two differ in their responses to economic change. For example, a decline in economic performance will lead a tin-pot regime to increase its repression of the population, whereas it will lead a totalitarian government to reduce repression. The model also shows why military dictatorships (a subspecies of tin-pots) tend to be short-lived and often voluntarily hand power over to a civilian regime; explains numerous features of totalitarian regimes; and suggests what policies will enable democratic regimes to deal with dictatorships effectively.