A Model of Spoils Politics

Accounts of state failure in the developing world frequently highlight a logic of "spoils politics" in which a government and an opposing faction vie for control of the state and the accompanying spoils. Attempts to buy the opposition off play a key role in this logic, and an informational...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American journal of political science 2009-01, Vol.53 (1), p.207-222
Main Authors: Dal Bó, Ernesto, Powell, Robert
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Asymmetric information
Civil War
Civil wars
Conflict
Control
Defendants
Developing Countries
Game theory
Government
Information asymmetry
LDCs
Litigation
Pay-off
Political conflict
Political control
Political opposition
Political power
Political science
Politics
Power
Power-sharing
Rewards
Social conflict
Spoils of war
State failure
Temptation
Uncertainty
War
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Summary:Accounts of state failure in the developing world frequently highlight a logic of "spoils politics" in which a government and an opposing faction vie for control of the state and the accompanying spoils. Attempts to buy the opposition off play a key role in this logic, and an informational problem often complicates these efforts. Because of limited transparancy, the government generally has a better idea about the actual size of the spoils than the opposition does. We formalize this aspect of spoils politics as a signaling game in which the government has private information about the size of the spoils and tries to co-opt the opposition by offering a share of the spoils. The opposition can accept the offer or reject it by fighting. Consistent with the strong empirical finding that the probability of civil war is higher when income is low, the probability of breakdown increases as the size of the spoils decreases. We also study the effects of uncertainty, the opposition's military strength, the cost of fighting, and power-sharing agreements on the probability of fighting.
ISSN:0092-5853
1540-5907
DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2008.00366.x