Why is There no Revolution in North Korea? The Political Economy of Revolutions Revisited
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
Zitieren als
Apolte, T. (2012). Why is There no Revolution in North Korea? The Political Economy of Revolutions Revisited. Public Choice, 150, 561–578.Details
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