Why is There no Revolution in North Korea? The Political Economy of Revolutions Revisited

Apolte Thomas


Zusammenfassung
The paper critically assesses the Acemoglu-Robinson approach to revolutions, as it is focused on inequality of wealth or income rather than on collective-action problems. We show that income inequality is not a sufficient and not even a necessary condition for a revolution to occur. Rather, a necessary condition for a revolution is that any subpopulation can expect net benefits from it, for which inequality is not a precondition. As a result, a certain structure of commitment devices or their absence rather than inequality is crucial for explaining why revolutions sometimes occur and sometimes not.

Schlüsselwörter
credible commitments; dictatorship; political economy; redistribution



Publikationstyp
Forschungsartikel (Zeitschrift)

Begutachtet
Ja

Publikationsstatus
Veröffentlicht

Jahr
2012

Fachzeitschrift
Public Choice

Band
150

Erste Seite
561

Letzte Seite
578

Sprache
Englisch

ISSN
0048-5829

DOI