2004/02/01 by Léonard Wantchekon · 3 citations
Social Sciences · #Agency (philosophy) #Argument (complex analysis) #Authoritarianism #Culture, Economy, and Development Studies #Democracy #Democratization #Dictator #LEVIATHAN (cipher) #Law #Law and economics #Political Conflict and Governance #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Politics and Society in Latin America #Power (physics) #Social science #Sociology #State (computer science)
paper · doi:10.1017/s0003055404000978
openalex publication_date 2004/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/16
Political theorists from Machiavelli to Huntington have denied the possibility of popular government arising out of the chaos of civil war, instead prescribing an intermediate stage of one-man rule by a Prince, Leviathan, or a military dictator. Based on recent empirical evidence of post-civil war democratization in El Salvador, Mozambique, and elsewhere, I show that democracy can arise directly from anarchy. Predatory warring factions choose the citizenry and democratic procedures over a Leviathan when (1) their economic interests depend on productive investment by the citizens, (2) citizens' political preferences ensure that power allocation will be less biased under democracy than under a Leviathan, and (3) there is an external agency (e.g., the United Nations) that mediates and supervises joint disarmament and state-building. Ultimately, I discuss the implications of this argument for the basic intuitions of classical political theory and contemporary social theory regarding democratization and authoritarianism.