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Autocratic elections occur on uneven playing fields, yet their regular contestation compels ruling parties to pay attention to citizens' demands. This claim is at the heart of research linking multiparty elections in autocracies to improvements in human development. Recent work, however, casts doubt on the theoretical and empirical basis of such claims. This paper addresses this debate by focusing specifically on the adoption of social assistance programs, an often theorized but seldom examined link in the chain connecting electoral autocracy with improvements in human development. I demonstrate that electoral autocracies are more likely to adopt these programs than closed autocracies and that the impact largely works through within-country changes in the presence of electoral authoritarianism. The results are consistent with the argument that such regimes are more responsive to citizens' demands. However, they also remind researchers that the goal of such regimes is to win elections; there is little preventing them from crafting targeted social policies that secure the loyalty of the voting public but without the attendant improvements in broad measures of human development. I conclude with suggestions for how future research can better understand how authoritarian governance shapes development outcomes.

AbstractPersonalist regimes are more reliant on natural resource rents than other models of autocracy, but the direction of causation is unclear. Resource wealth could finance patronage and allow leaders to skip construction of institutionalized systems of rule, leading to more personalized autocracies. Conversely, personalist leaders may increase resource extraction, since diversifying the economy could increase the power of rivals. I use data on the degree of personalism and level of oil income to disentangle these interpretations. The results show that increases in oil income are associated with subsequent increases in personalism within autocracies. Since personalist regimes are less likely to successfully democratize, the results also provide important evidence as to why oil impedes democracy.

On average, democracy reduces political risk for foreign investors, yet this emphasis on regime type obscures the tremendous variation within autocracies. Moreover, conventional explanations emphasizing the role of checks and balances are ill‐suited to explain why some autocracies, which typically lack these features, are associated with such low‐risk environments. This article explains variations in political risk by emphasizing the role of autocratic leader replacement. Autocrats select from a heterogeneous mixture of private goods to appease narrow‐winning coalitions. Leader replacement in such regimes is, therefore, associated with new winning coalitions and new private goods. When turnover is frequent, the policy environment becomes more volatile and political risk increases relative to autocracies with more stable leadership. Importantly, the risk‐increasing effect of turnover holds for both irregular and rule‐bound leader transitions in autocracies. These predictions are strongly supported through cross‐national quantitative analysis employing a new measure of leaders' risk of political replacement.

Income inequality is frequently given a central role in explaining diverse political outcomes, but the specifics of how, when, and under what circumstances inequality really matters are far from clear. This paper addresses these questions by examining whether greater levels of inequality raise the risk of expropriation associated with foreign investment. The results demonstrate that inequality matters in two distinct ways. First, inequality elevates risk, although consistent with the argument developed herein, the effect is strongest when chief executives face high constraints on their decision making. Second, inequality mitigates the otherwise protective influence of political institutions on the risk of expropriation. The findings are robust across a variety of estimation strategies, including instrumental variable procedures that correct for error in the measurement of inequality. The findings provide new insights regarding the determinants of foreign investment while simultaneously resolving one part of the contested literature describing inequality's role in the political economy of development. Adapted from the source document.

When is oil a curse for health outcomes? This paper addresses the question by analyzing the effect of oil wealth on child mortality rates in nondemocratic countries. We argue that oil is particularly likely to harm child mortality when leaders have short time horizons. Such leaders are more likely to use oil revenues to finance private goods and patronage which builds their support coalition at the expense of public goods that benefit the broader population. We test this argument using panel regression and a global sample of nondemocratic regimes, supplemented with a case study of Cameroon. Results from both empirical approaches are consistent with our argument. These findings identify some specific conditions under which oil can be detrimental to child mortality, and thus explain some of the variation in health outcomes across oil-producing states.