TY - JOUR
T1 - The killing game
T2 - A theory of non-democratic succession
AU - Egorov, Georgy
AU - Sonin, Konstantin
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015.
PY - 2015/9/1
Y1 - 2015/9/1
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Execution
KW - Markov perfect equilibrium
KW - Non-democracy
KW - Reputation
KW - Succession
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U2 - 10.1016/j.rie.2015.05.005
DO - 10.1016/j.rie.2015.05.005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84942198313
SN - 1090-9443
VL - 69
SP - 398
EP - 411
JO - Research in Economics
JF - Research in Economics
IS - 3
ER -