Olga Valisyeva used the political variation across sub-national regions of the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin to understand how differences in the extent of elite fragmentation in autocracies affects the influence of resource abundance on the economic growth in the short run. She found that polities with fragmented elites underperform those with consolidated elites and link this effect to higher intensity of rent-seeking and higher costs of fights over rents due to the shorter time horizon of the elites.
Topic: " Autocratic Rule and Social Capital: Evidence from Imperial China "
Abstract: This paper explores the impact of autocratic rule on social capital---defined as the beliefs, attitudes, norms and perceptions that support cooperation. Political repression is a distinguishing characteristic of autocratic regimes. Between 1660--1788, individuals in imperial China were persecuted if they were suspected of holding subversive attitudes towards the state. A difference-in-differences approach suggests that in an average prefecture, exposure to those literary inquisitions led to a decline of 38% in local charities---a key proxy of social capital. Consistent with the historical panel results, we find that in affected prefectures, individuals have lower levels of generalized trust in modern China. Taking advantage of institutional variation in 20th c. China, and two instrumental variables, we provide further evidence that political repression permanently reduced social capital. Furthermore, we find that individuals in prefectures with a legacy of literary inquisitions are more politically apathetic. These results indicate a potential vicious cycle in which autocratic rule becomes self-reinforcing through causing a permanent decline in social capital.
Under what conditions can autocratic regimes undergo successful leadership transitions? The problem of transferring power has long been identified as one of the key challenges of continued authoritarian rule. Two main mechanisms that have emerged as potential solutions for autocratic succession are the presence of a ruling party and the implementation of hereditary succession. However, using a global dataset of autocratic successions from 1946-2015, I show that hereditary successions are incredibly rare in modern dictatorships, and that the presence of a ruling party is not a strong predictor of peaceful leadership succession. Instead, I argue that constitutional rules play a critical role in regulating the process of autocratic succession. I show evidence of this argument using original data on constitutional amendments outlining succession rules and the appointment of a de facto successor in 47 African countries from 1960-2005. I find that regimes that have formal succession rules written into the constitution and leaders who designate a clear successor are significantly more likely to undergo multiple leadership successions – regardless of whether the regime has a long-standing ruling party. Rather than introducing the crown prince problem, planning for leadership succession seems to be a stabilizing force for continued autocratic rule.
Topic: "Elections, Protest and Trust in Government: A Natural Experiment from Russia"
co-authored with Timothy Frye
What influences a level of trust between a government and citizens? It seems that one of key factors that determine it is fair elections. However, according to some studies, in autocracies post-election protests play an important role in the development of the trust of population. For instance, in Russian, an attitude of citizens toward the government is significantly improved in case such protests are not forbidden by the authorities. On the seminar dedicated to the article «Elections, Protest and Trust in Government: A Natural Experiment from Russia» the professor of NRU HSE Ekaterina Borisova spoke about that in more detail.
