stronger, and the Ruler's incentive to promote such symmetry will be greater. The theory explains the power structure … differences in the power structure of society: (1) the Ruler enjoyed weaker absolute power in Europe; (2) the People were more on … par with the Elites in China in terms of power and rights. Based on these narratives, we build a game-theoretical model …

political power. The ruling coalition consists of a subset of the individuals in the society and decides the distribution of …-transferable utility cooperative game. In all cases, the nature of the ruling coalition is determined by the power constraint, which …

attention, however. In this paper, we present a simple theory of the emergence and persistence of inefficient states. The … society consists of rich and poor individuals. The rich are initially in power, but expect to transition to democracy, which … rents for bureaucrats than would an efficient state structure. When the poor come to power in democracy, they will reform …

) and civil society (representing non-elite citizens), where both players can invest to increase their power. The model …

decision. We report results from lab experiments focused on such information-collection processes. We consider decisions … decision accuracies over time. Furthermore, groups using majority rule yield especially hasty and inaccurate decisions …

Many, if not most, personalistic dictatorships end up with a disastrous decision such as Hitler's attack on the Soviet …. Even if the decision is not ultimately fatal for the regime, such as Mao's Big Leap Forward or the Pol Pot …-informed subordinates have no chance to prevent the decision from being implemented. We offer a dynamic model of non-democratic politics, in …

and others in specialization. Our theory throws light on the nature of hierarchy, the optimal degree of decentralization …

political power decides the allocation of resources. We show that Pareto efficient allocations take a quasi-Markovian structure … and can be represented recursively as a function of the identity of the group in power and updated Pareto weights. For … disappear and labor supply and consumption levels fluctuate over time. The labor supply of groups that are not in power are …

theoretical results are summarized in a number of propositions. We discuss the implications of the theory, comment on its relation …

system, and second, that presidents have more power with respect to their own coalition than prime ministers do. These … setting power to another group. We argue that the model is consistent with a great deal of qualitative information about …