POLI 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Autocracy, Social Contract, Individual And Group Rights
3 Feb 2017
Department
Course
Professor
POLI 101: Intro to Global Politics — Fall 2016 — Prof. Epperly — Midterm 2 Guide
Roving bandit: theft by roving bandits
destroys the incentive to invest and
produce, leaving little for either the
population or the bandits. They would
ravage a population from time to time,
stealing everything that people made
Stationary bandit: dictator who
monopolizes and rationalizes theft in the
form of taxes. When a roving bandit
settles on a particular area and
eliminating the possibility of roving
bandits
Stationary bandits have different time
horizons
Olson finds that stationary bandits are
preferred to roving bandits because they
people would know exactly how much
theft to expect.
People prefer a democracy to a stationary
bandit because the government and the
people benefit from reducing taxes upon
the people.
An autocrat is interested in extracting
money from the people while in a
democracy, the government is interested
in the expansion of the marketplace.
Olson’s argument about democracy:
function to advance the interests of a
small percent of the population. Poor or
underrepresented minorities may be
ignored or further exploited.
Advancement of special interests.
Individual rights are best protected by a
democracy. “There is no private property
without government”
Olson said that “democracy permitted by
accidents of history that leave a balance of
power or a stalemate”
Olson’s argument about development:
People within a dictatorship DO NOT rise
up and overthrow the dictatorship in
order to install democracy, even though it
is in their best interest to do so. He calls
this a “logical mistake”. Democracies
develop because they are power players
in a competitive global environment and
they demand that dictatorships become
democracies as a price for giving
independence to the vanquished.
Social costs of autocracies: olsen reading
various outcomes of dictatorship versus
democracies
Social contracts:
Hobbes- Leviathan: state of nature where
life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short”
People come together, agree to give up
freedom to state.
Self-interested people. It is human nature
to take advantage of each other, not help
each other.
Locke- maximize individual liberty.
States as a neutral judge, legitimate by
individuals ceding right to protection.
Consent of the governed.
Rousseau- Social contract, but here its
about collective: popular sovereignty, will
of the people, etc.
Freedom is subordinating personal
interest to general will.
Runs every counter to Angelo-American
government.
Time horizons: how far in the future does
a bandit look when deciding how much to
take? If they are roving they can take
everything with no harm to themselves, if
they are stationary, it is in their best
interests to take at equilibrium so that the
benefits of a thriving society will benefit
them as well
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Roving bandit: theft by roving bandits destroys the incentive to invest and produce, leaving little for either the population or the bandits. They would ravage a population from time to time, stealing everything that people made. Stationary bandit: dictator who monopolizes and rationalizes theft in the form of taxes. When a roving bandit settles on a particular area and eliminating the possibility of roving bandits. Olson finds that stationary bandits are preferred to roving bandits because they people would know exactly how much theft to expect. People prefer a democracy to a stationary bandit because the government and the people benefit from reducing taxes upon the people. An autocrat is interested in extracting money from the people while in a democracy, the government is interested in the expansion of the marketplace. Olson"s argument about democracy: function to advance the interests of a small percent of the population. Poor or underrepresented minorities may be ignored or further exploited.
