The Need for Enemies
We develop a political economy model where some politicians have a comparative advantage in undertaking a task and this gives them an electoral advantage. This creates an incentive to underperform in the task in order to maintain their advantage. We interpret the model in the context of fighting against insurgents in a civil war and derive two main empirical implications which we test using Colombian data during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe. First, as long as rents from power are sufficiently important, large defeats for the insurgents should reduce the probability that politicians with comparative advantage, President Uribe, will fight the insurgents. Second, this effect should be larger in electorally salient municipalities. We find that after the three largest victories against the FARC rebel group, the government reduced its efforts to eliminate the group and did so differentially in politically salient municipalities. Our results therefore support the notion that such politicians need enemies to maintain their political advantage and act so as to keep the enemy alive
Year of publication: |
2012
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Authors: | Fergusson, Leopoldo |
Other Persons: | Robinson, James A. (contributor) ; Torvik, Ragnar (contributor) ; Vargas, Juan F. (contributor) |
Publisher: |
[2012]: [S.l.] : SSRN |
Subject: | Theorie | Theory | Kriminalpolitik | Criminal policy | Neue politische Ökonomie | Public choice | Kolumbien | Colombia | Bürgerkrieg | Civil war | Politische Unruhen | Political unrest | Wahlkampf | Electoral campaign |
Saved in:
freely available
Extent: | 1 Online-Ressource (41 p) |
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Series: | NBER Working Paper ; No. w18313 |
Type of publication: | Book / Working Paper |
Language: | English |
Notes: | Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments August 2012 erstellt |
Source: | ECONIS - Online Catalogue of the ZBW |
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013101816