Arthur Silve

States sometimes back rebellions abroad to signal resolve. We study this reputation-building logic in international relations, focusing on co-ethnic links between countries as an objective source of variation in a state's incentives to demonstrate resolve. We formally derive two interconnected predictions from the mechanism: (a) a state is more likely to endorse the uprising of a foreign group when facing a larger audience, resulting in (b) greater political inclusion for the group. We build a comprehensive panel dataset of co-ethnic rebellion sponsorship, and find evidence consistent with both predictions.

The digitalization of public services, known as GovTech, can disrupt traditional mechanisms to promote economic development (for example, financial inclusion, education, and health care), improve the delivery of public services, and expedite development objectives. For GovTech to be successful in enhancing the public sector's efficiency, transparency, and inclusiveness, its design and implementation require that private interests be aligned with the overarching goal of a “citizen-oriented” digitalization. Because the interests of the state and private providers are often antagonistic, the social dividends from GovTech remain contingent on implementing the appropriate market structure through adequate property rights and regulatory oversight.

We introduce a dynamic model that investigates the persistence and evolution of elite-dominated societies, where inherited political capital determines one’s social standing. Our analysis highlights the critical role of the distribution of exit options in the evolution of political inclusiveness across generations. An elite comparatively more mobile than the masses generally entrenches a politically stratified society, whereas a more widespread distribution of exit options can encourage inclusiveness. Under certain conditions differential mobility may still induce political inclusiveness across generations. Exit options across different political entities lead to a joint evolution of local power structures.

Why do some societies embrace innovative technologies, policies, and ideas, while others are slow to adopt, and some even resist, them? Incumbent producers are most likely to be affected by certain kinds of innovations; they also wield a disproportionate influence in the design of institutions and policies that encourage or limit their adoption. We show formally that the elite has four cardinal policy options: to appropriate the innovation for itself; to encourage its adoption; to tax, regulate, or limit the innovation; or to block it. We show that six features of an innovation determine how it is received: (i) whether it is easy to replicate; (ii) whether it complements or competes with the elite's sources of income; (iii) whether its impact is broad or narrow; (iv) whether it is location‐dependent, and (v) concealable; (vi) whether it requires large fixed costs. While other works have occasionally considered one of these factors, we show where each feature comes from, and we assess them systematically and together. We provide illustrative evidence of the relevance and generality of the model to understand the fate of a variety of innovations.

Digital technologies are often described as posing unique challenges for public regulators worldwide. Their fast‐pace and technical nature are viewed as being incompatible with the relatively slow and territorially bounded public regulatory processes. In this paper, we argue that not all digital technologies pose the same challenges for public regulators. We more precisely maintain that the digital technologies’ label can be quite misleading as it actually represents a wide variety of technical artifacts. Based on two dimensions, the level of centralization and (im)material nature, we provide a typology of digital technologies that importantly highlights how different technical artifacts affect differently local, national, regional and global distributions of power. While some empower transnational businesses, others can notably reinforce states’ power. By emphasizing this, our typology contributes to ongoing discussions about the global regulation of a digital economy and helps us identify the various challenges that it might present for public regulators globally. At the same time, it allows us to reinforce previous claims that these are importantly, not all new and that they often require us to solve traditional cooperation problems.

Civil wars tend to cluster in time and in space. Similar geographical characteristics, resource endowments, and climatic conditions, may favor conflict simultaneously in neighbor countries. Moreover, civil conflict in one country often spills over to neighboring countries. The empirical literature usually considers these two explanations separately. We propose a model of the contagion of civil wars, which suggests that the risk of contagion has an impact of domestic features of a neighbor. In particular, a government can prevent contagion through investment in better institutions. This channel is the source of a strategic complementarity between the institutions of neighboring countries. This explains a pattern of clustering of countries according to their institutions, and suggests that contagion effect may have been underestimated by the empirical literature. Classification JEL: D74, N40, P48.

Civil conflicts spill over into neighboring countries. This paper proposes a theory of the contagion of civil wars. Weak territorial control facilitates the emergence of a regional market for war inputs in the “porous frontier.” The contagion effect is nonlinear and creates multiple equilibrium situations of regional complexes of civil conflicts. This helps explain the observed patterns of regional clustering of conflict and institutional quality, and raises identification issues in the measurement of the contagion effect. We also derive a positive spillover of civil wars: governments are sometimes in a position to avoid contagion by improving their institutions. Finally, we explore the policy implications for military intervention, and military and institutional cooperation.

Collaboration between two groups that may invest their resources in a common productive activity has the potential to lead to conflict over the output of that activity. This article examines the stakes of such conflict as well as the willingness for parties to subject themselves to a third-party arbiter. The model highlights three determinants of conflict and of investment in credibility-enhancing institutions: the value of the output, the relative endowments of the parties, and the mutual benefits of collaboration. In particular, the analysis shows that complementarity between the groups’ resources lowers the stakes of political conflict and increases the incentives to commit. The model thus suggests a new mechanism through which we can understand the frequency of conflict and the poor institutions associated in countries with mineral resources. The model’s predictions also help us to understand how Mauritius avoided the resource curse and was able to develop sustainable economic growth.

Dictators and Democrats : Masses, Elites, and Regime Change, Stephan Haggard et Robert R. Kaufman, 2016, Princeton Princeton University Press, 424 p.. Un article de la revue Études internationales (Quand la sécurité se conjugue au féminin) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.