Browsing by Autor "Ragnar Torvik"

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Endogenous Presidentialism
(2008) James A. Robinson; Ragnar Torvik
We develop a model to understand the incidence of presidential and parliamentary institutions.Our analysis is predicated on two ideas: first, that minorities are relatively powerful in a parliamentary system compared to a presidential system, and second, that presidents have more power with respect to their own coalition than prime ministers do.These assumptions imply that while presidentialism has separation of powers, it does not necessarily have more checks and balances than parliamentarism.We show that presidentialism implies greater rent extraction and lower provision of public goods than parliamentarism.Moreover, political leaders who prefer presidentialism may be supported by their own coalition if they fear losing agenda setting power to another group.We argue that the model is consistent with a great deal of qualitative information about presidentialism in Africa and Latin America.
Fear and Dreams: Understanding the Non-Institutional Sources of Leader Strategy
(RELX Group (Netherlands), 2024) María Angélica Bautista; Juan Sebastián Galán; James A. Robinson; Rafael Torres; Ragnar Torvik
<span>Fear and Dreams: Understanding the Non-Institutional Sources of Leader Strategy</span>
(RELX Group (Netherlands), 2024) María Angélica Bautista; Juan Sebastián Galán; James A. Robinson; Rafael Torres; Ragnar Torvik
The Need for Enemies
(Oxford University Press, 2014) Leopoldo Fergusson; James A. Robinson; Ragnar Torvik; Juan F. Vargas
We develop a model where some politicians have an edge in undertaking a task and this gives them electoral advantage, creating an incentive to underperform in the task. We test the empirical implications in the context of fighting against insurgents, using Colombian data. The main prediction is that large defeats for the insurgents reduce the probability that these politicians fight them, especially in electorally salient places. We find that after the largest victories against FARC rebels, the government reduced its counterinsurgency efforts, especially in politically important municipalities. Politicians need to keep enemies alive in order to maintain their political advantage.
The Need for Enemies
(2012) Leopoldo Fergusson; James Robinson; Ragnar Torvik; Juan F. Vargas
We develop a political economy model where some politicians have a comparative advantage in undertaking a task and this gives them an electoral advantage. This creates an incentive to underperform in the task in order to maintain their advantage. We interpret the model in the context of fighting against insurgents in a civil war and derive two main empirical implications which we test using Colombian data during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe. First, as long as rents from power are sufficiently important, large defeats for the insurgents should reduce the probability that politicians with comparative advantage, President Uribe, will fight the insurgents. Second, this effect should be larger in electorally salient municipalities. We find that after the three largest victories against the FARC rebel group, the government reduced its efforts to eliminate the group and did so differentially in politically salient municipalities. Our results therefore support the notion that such politicians need enemies to maintain their political advantage and act so as to keep the enemy alive.