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Article
Can You Trust a Dictator: An Endogenous Model of Authoritarian Regimes’ Signing and Compliance with International Treaties
Conflict Management and Peace Science (2014)
  • Olga Chyzh, University of Iowa
Abstract
Building on recent studies that focus on institutional variation among authoritarian regimes, this paper asks whether this variation leads to meaningful differences in the tendencies to reach and comply with international agreements. The results suggest that previous evidence regarding the democratic credibility advantage over autocracies may have been driven by a lack of a more refined authoritarian regime typology. Employing such a typology, I find that the institutional constraints that generate credibility and compliance may not be unique to democracies. In fact, the only authoritarian regime that seems to lack such features is bossism, a personalist party-based regime. Bosses are more likely than democracies to enter into international agreements, but are less likely than democracies to comply with the agreements they sign. This result is remarkably robust. Results associated with other types of autocracies suggest minor or no differences between autocracies and democracies, relating to reaching and complying with international treaties. Finally, I find evidence of strategic behavior, as all regime types are more likely to sign agreements and less likely to comply when the other negotiating party is a boss, compared with a democracy.
Keywords
  • Authoritarian regimes,
  • compliance,
  • international treaties,
  • selectorate theory,
  • strategic interaction
Publication Date
2014
DOI
10.1177/0738894213501132
Publisher Statement
This is a manuscript of an article from Conflict Management and Peace Science 31 (2014): 3, doi:10.1177/0738894213501132. Posted with permission.
Citation Information
Olga Chyzh. "Can You Trust a Dictator: An Endogenous Model of Authoritarian Regimes’ Signing and Compliance with International Treaties" Conflict Management and Peace Science Vol. 31 Iss. 1 (2014) p. 3 - 27
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/olga-chyzh/1/