| All politicians, regardless of the institutional form of government within which they operate, face the trade off between using their power to expand current periods gains and tenure extension. That is, if a politician exploits his power too much, he will be removed from office; thus, a rational politician might temper his exploitation to secure additional periods during which he can exploit his power to a lesser degree. Effectively then, all politicians are limited autocrats. In the first essay of this dissertation, I model policy choices within the general limited autocracy framework where a politician maximizes the net present value of his rule, recognizing that the ultimate length of his rule is endogenous to his policy choices. This model provides insights into how government emerges within the stateless society and suggests the conditions under which a ruler might rationally cede power to democratic institutions to solve the precommitment problem he faces regarding his incentives to expropriate national income for his own use.; This limited autocracy model is then applied to a politician's choice of environmental standards. While a dictator's substantial share of national income provides a disincentive for him to protect the environment relative to a democracy's median voter, his tenure extension motive, which the median voter does not face, might induce him to set relatively high environmental standards. Because high environmental quality will make the dictator's people happier, without providing them with any additional revolutionary resources, this strategy will decrease the probability of the dictator being deposed. Using panel data techniques to control for cultural and income factors, I show that dictatorships do generally exhibit better environmental quality than do democracies.; The third essay looks at a democratic legislative agenda setter as a limited autocrat who can use his agenda control powers to either enrich his constituency or to pursue nationally favored policies to secure his party's majority position. If the agenda setter has a national constituency, these motives will coincide, however, I show that the procedure used to select the agenda setter in the U.S. House, the Speaker, creates a divergence between these two strategies. I present empirical evidence suggesting the Speaker, historically, has chosen to represent his constituents rather than national interests. |
