Democratization as a continuous choice: A comment on Acemoglu and Robinson’s correction to “Why Did the West Extend the Franchise?”

Journal article

Paul Castañeda Dower, Evgeny Finkel, Scott Gehlbach, Steven Nafziger
Journal of Politics, vol. 82(2), 2020, pp. 776-780

DOI: 10.1086/707060

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APA Click to copy
Dower, P. C., Finkel, E., Gehlbach, S., & Nafziger, S. (2020). Democratization as a continuous choice: A comment on Acemoglu and Robinson’s correction to “Why Did the West Extend the Franchise?” Journal of Politics, 82(2), 776–780. https://doi.org/10.1086/707060

Chicago/Turabian Click to copy
Dower, Paul Castañeda, Evgeny Finkel, Scott Gehlbach, and Steven Nafziger. “Democratization as a Continuous Choice: A Comment on Acemoglu and Robinson’s Correction to ‘Why Did the West Extend the Franchise?’” Journal of Politics 82, no. 2 (2020): 776–780.

MLA Click to copy
Dower, Paul Castañeda, et al. “Democratization as a Continuous Choice: A Comment on Acemoglu and Robinson’s Correction to ‘Why Did the West Extend the Franchise?’” Journal of Politics, vol. 82, no. 2, 2020, pp. 776–80, doi:10.1086/707060.

BibTeX Click to copy

@article{dower2020a,
  title = {Democratization as a continuous choice: A comment on Acemoglu and Robinson’s correction to “Why Did the West Extend the Franchise?”},
  year = {2020},
  issue = {2},
  journal = {Journal of Politics},
  pages = {776-780},
  volume = {82},
  doi = {10.1086/707060},
  author = {Dower, Paul Castañeda and Finkel, Evgeny and Gehlbach, Scott and Nafziger, Steven}
}

Abstract

Acemoglu and Robinson recently provided a correction to Proposition 1 in "Why Did the West Extend the Franchise" (Acemoglu and Robinson 2000), showing that for intermediate values of q (the probability of social unrest in the future) the unique Markov perfect equilibrium is in mixed strategies. We discuss this correction in the context of a recent generalization of the Acemoglu-Robinson model that allows for a continuous institutional choice by the elite. In that environment, no correction is necessary: there is a unique threshold q* such that the elite liberalizes if q < q* and does not liberalize otherwise. Moreover, the main empirical prediction of Acemoglu and Robinson (2000) generalizes: not only does the elite not liberalize when the excluded group poses a frequent threat of unrest, but conditional on some representation having been granted, the level of representation is decreasing in the probability of unrest.