Assassinations work

Should Kim Jong-Il or Robert Mugabe be assassinated? This new paper (pdf) by Ben Olken suggests so:

Using a novel data set of assassinations and assassination attempts against political leaders from 1875 to 2004...we find that the successful assassination of autocrats produces institutional change - substantially raising the probability that a country transitions to democracy. The democratization effect is sustained 10 years later.

The caveat here is that word "successful". Failed assassination attempts can backfire, by increasing the extent of repression.

Comments

[dearieme]

Some might suspect that the catatrophic consequences of the assassination in Sarajevo would outweigh anything else one might think of. Just suppose - no Lenin and therefore no Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot.....

[Shuggy]

"Some might suspect that the catatrophic consequences of the assassination in Sarajevo would outweigh anything else one might think of."

Nah - Archie Duke wasn't really a political leader. And if it hadn't been that, it would have been something else.

[dearieme]

I suspect you're right, Shuggy; I'm just jeering at the laughable notion that a little bit of arithmetic can settle such issues.

[Bob B]

I see that in other countries, they tend to settle outstanding football manager issues more decisively than after our pusillanimous manner in Britain:

"The president of a leading Bulgarian football team, Lokomotiv Plovdiv, has been shot dead in a suburb of the capital, Sofia. . . "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6654625.stm

[pommygranate]

I wonder whether Saddam shouldn't just have been assassinated.

[pommygranate]

'Assassination of autocrats is more likely to lead to change than assassination of a democrat.'

Machiavelli devoted two chapters to this in The Prince.

His advice to would-be war-mongers was to assassinate the leaders of autocratically run countries and then rule tyranically, but to assimilate the leaders of more democratic countries

[Bob B]

I must admit to being a tad disappointed with S&M's thread header here. At least we could have had assassination as but one among a graduated range of incentives on offer for resolving principal-agent problems.