The Logic of Political Survival
Bruce B. de Mesquita
We believe.. that the infinite variety of real-world institutional arrangements can be distilled into just two criti- cal dimensions: the selectorate and the winning coalition. By mapping a diverse set of political considerations onto the two dimensions of selec- torate size and winning-coalition size, we sacrifice detail and precision, but gain the possibility of explaining a rich variety of political phenom- ena with a relatively simple theoretical structure...
The important aspect of being in the selectorate is that membership conveys the opportunity to become a member of a winning coalition. To be sure, membership in the selectorate does not necessar- ily make the prospects of joining a winning coalition good, but it does raise those prospects above zero and, in democracies, up to levels as high as 50 percent.
We define the selectorate as the set of people whose endowments include the qualities or characteristics institutionally required to choose the government’s leadership and necessary for gaining access to private benefits doled out by the government’s leadership. All selectorate mem- bers within a polity, therefore, share certain common characteristics. Those characteristics, however, can differ across political systems, so that an individual can qualify for selectorate membership in one polity and yet have no possibility of qualifying in another...
The winning coalition is defined as a subset of the selectorate of sufficient size such that the subset’s support endows the leadership with political power over the remainder of the selectorate as well as over the disenfranchised members of the society. How many supporters are required to form a winning coalition depends on the mix of qualities required for membership in the winning coalition and on the degree to which those qualities relate to lumpy or broadly distributed characteristics within the selectorate. In exchange for their support, members of the winning coalition receive a share of whatever private benefits the incumbent doles out to her supporters...
Afghanistan
Direct and indirect military intervention [in a foreign country] provide mechanisms through which institutions can be improved. Unfortunately, the political incentives of leaders from large-coalition interventionist systems do not promote the establishment of large-coalition systems abroad. Unless the foreign policy goals of the foreign state coincide with those of the nation-building state—as was the case in the two great exceptions, opposition to communism for Japan and West Germany—military intervention will not fulfill its potential for institutional reform.
Events in Afghanistan reinforce this point. The United States intervened militarily in Afghanistan in 2002 to support the rebels of the North Alliance in removing the Taliban regime because of the Taliban’s support for international terrorism. Although the United States relied heavily on the troops of the North Alliance to defeat the Taliban, the United States still took a dominant role in shaping Afghanistan’s new government. The United States chose to support an interim government led by Hamid Karzai. These arrangements paid lip service to greater inclusiveness, because the government requires the support of tribal leaders and offers the prospect of future elections. Yet, rather than having the leader rely directly on the independent support of members of a mass electorate, the reliance on tribal leaders created a hierarchical aggregation of support. The chosen institutions required the leader to retain the support of a small number of people from the small pool of tribal leaders. Even if elections are held, they are likely to be dominated by bloc voting.While such a small-W, small-S system does not encourage the promotion of public welfare, it does require the leader to spend considerable resources to reward supporters. The low loyalty norm created by small-S, small-W systems makes leaders most ready to trade policy for aid, and hence most likely to do the bidding of the United States...
War
The institutional arrangements within democracies mean that the survival of democratic leaders depends more on policy success than on the provision of private goods to supporters. Given this, once engaged in a war, democratic leaders typically make every effort to win.. Since the survival of democratic leaders depends on public policy success, they typically want to avoid long and costly wars.
Construction
The ease with which graft can be hidden in construction projects makes this industrial activity unusually attractive as a way for leaders to indulge in cronyism and nepotism. Every society requires construction, of course, and not all of it involves the misappropriation of funds. But there is sufficient anecdotal evidence to suggest that construction involves an unusual degree of corrupt practices.
We test the relationship between our indicator Construction and the effects of W and W/S using our standard models. The selectorate model performs well when it comes to assessing Construction, though the substantive impact is more modest than for corruption. W by itself is significantly associated with a dampening of construction projects and remains significant after we control for other factors. WS:Income, in contrast, turns out to contribute significantly to increasing construction.
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