No. 7/2006
WHEN IS DEMOCRACY AN EQUILIBRIUM?:
THEORY AND
EVIDENCE FROM COLOMBIA'S
LA VIOLENCIA
MARIO CHACÓN
JAMES A. ROBINSON
RAGNAR TORVIK
Abstract:
The conventional wisdom in political science is that for a democracy
to be consoli-
dated, all groups must have a chance to attain power. If they do not
then they will subvert democracy and choose to fight for power.
In this paper we show that this wisdom is, if not totally incorrect,
seriously incomplete. This is so because although the probability of winning
an election increases with the size of a group, so does the probability
of winning a fight. Thus in a situation where all groups have a high
chance of winning an election, they
may also have a high chance of winning a fight. Indeed, in a natural
model, we show that democracy may never be consolidated in such
a situation. Rather, democracy may only be stable when one group
is dominant. We provide a test of a key aspect of our model using
data from La Violencia, a political conflict in Colombia during the years
1946-1950
between the Liberal and Conservative parties. Consistent with our results,
and contrary to the conventional wisdom, we show that fighting
between the parties was more intense in municipalities where the support of the parties was more evenly balanced.
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