This thesis consists of three self-contained chapters. The first chapter is titled ‘A Theory of Divide-and-Rule: Kleptocracy and Its Breakdown’. The second chapter is tilted ‘Kleptocracy and the Benevolent Opposition Organizations’. The last chapter is titled ‘Democratization, Revolution and International Interventions’. In the first chapter, I develop a theory of divide-and-rule, explaining how kleptocracies can be sustained in equilibrium by implementing a strategy of divide-and-rule. This chapter shows how this strategy is successfully implemented by a kleptocratic ruler, who is able to play one group of citizens against another. I explore the extent to which this is robust to a society with any number of citizen groups. When there are large numbers of citizen groups, a small number of them may benefit from the discriminatory redistribution policies implemented by the kleptocrat, while the vast majority will become the victims of the kleptocracy. Consequently, sharp economic and political inequality between the citizen groups may arise because of the discriminatory policies resulting from the divide-and-rule strategy. Furthermore, this chapter examines two cases in which this strategy may fail and the kleptocracy will break down. Several results are obtained in this chapter, and they are applied to some real world cases. In the second chapter, I introduce a theoretical framework, based on the model developed in the first chapter, examining how the benevolent opposition organizations, such as trade unions and religious organizations, may constrain the strategy of divide-and-rule. This chapter shows that by punishing those citizen groups supporting the kleptocratic rulers, they may help strengthen the cooperation between them, thus improving the welfare of the civilians and even removing the kleptocratic ruler. However, compared to punishing the citizen group supporting the ruler, the benevolent opposition organizations could more effectively constrain the kleptocracy through rewarding the citizen group who challenges the ruler or supports another citizen group in challenging the ruler. In the last chapter, I develop a model for military interventions and economic sanctions respectively, examining their impacts on the process of democratization. In a dictatorial society or a weakly institutionalized society, the ruler and the opposition vie for social surplus, while the international community decide whether or not to carry out military interventions, or to impose economic sanctions in this society. The theoretical frameworks developed in this chapter formalize the interaction between the international community, the opposition and the ruler. This chapter shows that both military interventions and economic sanctions may help promote the democratization process in a state, while they may also induce the opposition to resort to a revolution to overthrow the regime, thus increasing the likelihood of a civil war and raising the uncertainty in the democratization process. Several analytical results in this chapter may shed light on the questions about the efficacy and impacts of international interventions on the democratization process in a state. Furthermore, this chapter introduces the military interventions in 2011 Libya and the economic sanctions against Burma as case studies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:582384 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Chen, Xuezheng |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/57424/ |
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