Do political regimes systematically impact the price of international long-distance phone calls? We argue that, compared to autocracies, democratic governments have stronger incentives to regulate the provision of telephone service efficiently. In contrast, autocracies have incentives to limit communication between their citizens and the rest of the world. We thus expect the price of international long-distance to vary with political regime. Controlling for other factors that may impact long-distance pricing – such as level of economic development – we test this hypothesis using a cross-section of 190 countries and find evidence of a democracy-discount. It costs less to call democracies by about 25 percent.
This article advances a theory of why autocratic coalitions adopt constitutions. We argue that autocratic rulers adopt constitutions in the nascent stages of an autocratic coalition taking power, when uncertainty about leader intentions is high. Constitutions can serve to consolidate a new distribution of power, allowing a launching organization (LO) to codify and defend their rights. Autocratic coalitions that adopt constitutions should therefore last longer in power than those that do not. Using new data compiled on constitutions created under autocracy in Latin America from 1950 to 2002, we show that autocratic coalitions who adopt and operate under constitutions extend their survival. This result holds after controlling for the presence of other autocratic institutions, country fixed effects, and after using an instrumental variables strategy to address reverse causation. A case study of Mexico details the mechanism by which this relationship between constitutions and stability occurs.
In this paper we have analyzed the probability of a country of experiencing a military dictatorship, using a panel of 48 African countries over the period 1970- 2007. We found a number of results. Income per capita negatively affects the probability of a military rule, with some nonlinearities, in particular lower levels of income per capita increases the probability of having the military in office, whereas as long as it increases the probability gets smaller. Manufacturing and primary sectors are positively related with military rule, whereas the share of GDP deriving from natural resources is insignificant. Larger openness to trade negatively affects military rule. Polarization and fractionalization have opposite effects, the former increases the probability of a military rule, while the latter decreases it. External threat becomes significantly positive only when lagged. Finally, crude oil may price negatively affect military rule, whereas agricultural price is usually non-significant.That is from the paper "The Probability of Military Rule in Africa, 1970-2007" by Costa, Caruso, and Ricciuti.
