RESEARCH PROPOSAL

LUKE FITZPATRICK

1. Motivation The Arab Spring began on December 18, 2010 with the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi. Catalyzing the Jasmine Revolution1 he plunged Tunisia into a 10-month long period of political turmoil that saw the ousting of tyrannical president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, concluding with the election of the Tunisian Constituent Assembly on October 23, 2011. What remains to be seen is whether or not the democratic rising from the ashes of the toppled authoritarian regime will remain for, if at all. I plan to investigate the ecacy - the persistence - of newly adopted governments and how this persistence relates to type of ousted government, the type of edgling government, and the economic strength of the nation in which the political transition takes place. 2. Literature Review Acemoglu and Robinson [?] developed a simple theory of coups and revolutions meant to explain the economic aspects of political transition and consolidation. Houle [?] demonstrates that shortcomings of existing theories linking inequality from democratization, and performs an empirical test investigating the relationship, nding inequality increases the probability of backsliding from democracy to dictatorship. Boix [?] proposed a theory of political transitions, nding that increasing levels of income bolster the chances of democracy. Przeworksi et al. found that between the years of 1950 to 1990, dictatorships lasted longer on average than democracies [?]

Keeping with the geopolitical nomenclature ofcolor revolutions.

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LUKE FITZPATRICK

3. Main Text The persistence of edgling governments in the short and long run vary.When a new government takes hold after a coup or revolution, it faces myriad hurdles in maintaining control over the tumultuous political landscape. These include the opposing group that just lost power, a possibly hostile native population if the new regime is foreign, and even similar radical splinter groups from within the party that may be excluded from successful ruling faction. In Ticchi and Vidigni (2003) [?] these success rates were characterized by the probability of wartime in the subsequent periods. They treat this probability as exogenous, but I plan to endogenize this value and treat it as a function of political fundamentals. I suspect that several fundamental characteristics contribute to the persistence of edgling governments, and that by controlling for all variables a specication of the form (1) yit = x i +
0

may shed light on which fundamentals exactly contribute to persistence of government. In the above specication, yit is the probability in subsequent period t of new regime type i 0, 1 (corresponding to dictatorship and democracy, respectively) of maintaining control through the next period. From this specication, y can vary from period to period. Intuitively, new authoritarian regimes face larger challenges immediately after takeover while democracies have a greater probability of initial success due to a warm glow feeling held by the ruled party. In this specication, the vector of controls x needs to include as many covariates as possible in order to account for confoundedness. This vector will include measures of economic development (GDP per capita, share of government spending as fraction of GDP) measures of human development (standard of living, health standards) as well as less tangible measures of development (domestic democratic capital, neighboring democratic capital). Additionally, it may include geographic covariates to account for regions more prone to political volatility. I suspect that successful transitions to democracy will occur in nations with high GDP per capita