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A0885
Title: A coordination game of regime change and democratization: Information manipulation and intermediate regimes Authors:  Tariq Basir - South Asian University (India) [presenting]
Soumya Datta - South Asian University (India)
Abstract: The purpose is to incorporate the collective action problem into a democratization framework which does not account for the collective action problem on the citizens' side in organizing themselves to impose a revolutionary threat to the elites/regime. We try to account for the collective action problem in this context, within a framework of global games of regime change. The preliminary analyzes suggest a unique equilibrium when we do not account for the engagement of the regime in information manipulation regarding the cost of revolution, i.e. signaling game; While it suggests the existence of multiple equilibria when we allow for information manipulation. We show that information manipulation becomes possible for the intermediate regime types only, and these regimes might be able to reduce the attack size and frequency of regime changes, by signaling a higher cost of revolution; which might not have been possible without the possibility of information manipulation (policy-intervention). Furthermore, the manipulation becomes possible when the opportunity cost of revolution is not very low (not in a severe economic downturn), implying when citizens are not able to solve the coordination problem among themselves easily. Similarly, the multiplicity result in our paper could be linked to the insecure autocracy/intermediate regimes literature for a richer comparative statics analysis.