Browsing by Author "D'Arcy, Michelle"

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Credible Enforcement Before Credible Commitment: Exploring the Importance of Sequencing
(2013-03) D'Arcy, Michelle; Nistotskaya, Marina; QoG Institute
States that are both strong and democratic are the most capable of delivering human development. Existing rational choice accounts of collective action and credible commitment have provided us with the answer as to why this is the case: effective social order depends on the ability of the state, as the external enforcer of collective agreements, to monitor compliance and punish free-riders (credible enforcement) and that the state is constrained to only act in the collective good (credible commitment). However, what these fundamentally static accounts do not provide is answers to the question of how credibly constrained Leviathans emerge, and how the two processes – of the ac-cumulation of power and the constraining of power – interact over time. We make a theoretical contribution by presenting a dynamic model of the state which shows that the sequencing of these two processes lead to fundamentally different outcomes. Specifically, we argue that while credible enforcement before credible commitment (i.e. democratizing after the state has become strong) can lead to a constrained Leviathan, credible commitment before credible enforcement (i.e. democratizing before the state has become strong) cannot. We illustrate the theoretical argument with two contrasting case studies of Ireland and Sweden. Our conclusions suggest that what matters for beneficial social outcomes is not democracy per se, but the timing of democracy in state development.
Food Security and Elite-Ruler Relations in Sub-Saharan Africa: Exploring the impact of democracy on public goods provision
(2012-03) D'Arcy, Michelle; QoG Institute
How does democracy impact on public goods provision? This question has provoked a wealth of empirical and theoretical investigation, but few answers that satisfactorily explain emerging patterns in Sub-Saharan Africa. Most existing accounts have focused on only one channel of influence – that between rulers and voters, arguing that democracy articulates demand for public goods provision through this mechanism. This paper focuses on a different relationship – that between rulers and elites – and argues that this mechanism can help to explain what has been happening on the supply side in public goods provision on the continent. The paper argues that democracy increases rulers’ need for patronage as a means of elite management, leading to a decline in capacity, and an inability to effectively supply public goods. The need for patronage is increased as democracy, by creating more routes to power, destabilizes rulers in relation to elites, who constitute their main rivals for power, and reduces their ability to employ strategies of control, thus making those of exchange more important. The argument is illustrated with a ‘most likely’ case of food security policy reform in Malawi.
State First, Then Democracy: Using Cadastral Records to Explain Governmental Performance
(2015) D'Arcy, Michelle; Nistotskaya, Marina; QoG Institute
Taxation, Democracy and State-Building: How Does Sequencing Matter?
(2012-05) D'Arcy, Michelle; QoG Institute
What is the relationship between democracy and taxation, under conditions of ‘reverse’ sequencing? Existing theories about taxation and democracy have presumed this relationship to be positive, but they have largely been predicated on the West’s historical evolution where the state became strong before it became democratic. The ‘reverse’ sequencing most developing countries are experiencing – democratizing before they consolidate their statehood – may have important implications for their ability to tax. The paper argues that taxing in a context of weak state capacity necessitates state-building with intrinsically coercive elements, as citizens have few incentives to voluntarily comply. The paper hypothesizes that democracy reduces the ability of the state to coerce and that this has implications for how it can tax. The empirical section uses a most similar systems design to compare a democracy, Lesotho, with an autocracy, Rwanda, demonstrating how the mechanics of this process operate: how governments incentivize bureaucracies into certain kinds of tax collection, depending on regime type; how this then affects the different levels of state-building activities the tax authority engages in; and how this cumulatively impacts on tax outcomes.