How should a state which lacks the monopoly of violence go about acquiring it? We investigate the use of high-powered incentives for members of the Colombian army as part of a strategy to combat left-wing guerillas and build the state's monopoly of violence. We show that this top-down...

Although almost half of the world's population lives under nondemocratic regimes, the questions of how policy decisions are made and how power changes hands in nondemocracies have received relatively little attention in the political economy literature. Gordon Tullock (1987) suggested that...