ECONOMY

320 self-enforcingdemocracy
democracies appear to redistribute much less than wealthy ones: the average percentage
of taxes in GDP is 9.3 in democracies with per capita income below $1,000, 15.3
in democracies with income between $1,000 and $3,000, 19.8 between $3,000 and
$6,000, and28.0 above $6,000. The explanation must be that the threat of rebellion
by the rich is tight in poor countries. 12
4.3 Electoral Chances and the Design of Institutions
Przeworski (1991) argued that democracy is sustained when the losers in a particular
round of the electoral competition have sufficient chances to win in the future to
make it attractive for them to wait rather than to rebel against the current electoral
defeat. 13 The argument was that when the value of electoral victory is greater than the
expected value of dictatorship which, in turn, is greater than the value of electoral
defeat, then political actors will accept a temporary electoral defeat if they have
reasonable prospects to win in the future. In light of the model presented here, such
prospects are neither sufficient nor necessary for democracy to survive. In poor countries,
they may be insufficient, since even those groups that have a good chance to win
may want to monopolize power and use it without having to face electoral constraints.
Above some sufficiently high income level, in turn, losers accept an electoral defeat
even when they have no chance to win in the future, simply because even permanent
losers have too much at stake to risk turning against democracy. Political forces are
“deradicalized” because they are “bourgeoisified.”
Hence, the model implies that while democracy survives in wealthy countries under
a wide variety of electoral institutions, poorer countries must get their institutions
right. Specifically, institutional choice matters for those countries in which democracy
can survive under some but not under all distributions of electoral chances.
4.4 Constitutions
By “constitutions,” I mean only those rules that are difficult to change, because
they are protected by super-majorities or by some other devices. Note that in some
countries, such as contemporary Hungary, constitutional rules can be changed by
a simple majority, while in other countries, such as Germany, some clauses of the
constitution cannot be changed at all.
Constitutions are neither sufficient nor necessary for democracy to survive. Constitutions
are not sufficient because agreeing to rules does not imply that results of
their application will be respected. We have seen that under some conditions, parties
obey electoral verdicts only as long as they turn out in a particular way. Hence, the
¹² A rival hypothesis is that poor societies are less unequal, so that there is less room for
redistribution. Yet, with all the caveats about data quality, Przeworski et al. (2000, table2.15) show that
the average Gini coefficients are almost identical is societies with per capita income less than $1,000 and
with income above $6,000.
¹³ This argument and the subsequent discussion assume again that parties do not converge to the
same platforms in the electoral equilibrium, so that results of elections matter.