Abstract
The winner of a battle for a throne can either execute or spare the loser; if the loser is spared, he contends the throne in the next period. Executing the losing contender gives the winner a chance to rule uncontested for a while, but then his life is at risk if he loses to some future contender who might be, in equilibrium, too frightened to spare him. The trade-off is analyzed within a dynamic complete information game, with, potentially, an infinite number of long-term players. In an equilibrium, decisions to execute predecessors depend on the predecessors' history of executions. With a dynastic rule in place, incentives to kill the predecessor are much higher than in non-hereditary dictatorships. The historical illustration for our analysis contains a discussion of post-World War II politics of execution of deposed leaders and detailed discussion of non-hereditary military dictatorships in Venezuela in 1830-1964, which witnessed dozens of comebacks and no single political execution.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 398-411 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | Research in Economics |
Volume | 69 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 1 2015 |
Keywords
- Execution
- Markov perfect equilibrium
- Non-democracy
- Reputation
- Succession
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Economics and Econometrics