150084 UE PR: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Institutions (2014W)

This course introduces students to the recent institutional turn in the study of comparative authoritarianism and its implications for the China field. For a long time, seemingly democratic institutions (hereafter SDIs) in authoritarian countries such as elections, political parties and legislatures had been regarded as institutional facades that do not have much real effect on authoritarian politics. The recent surge of the scholarly interest in authoritarianism has challenged this conventional wisdom and provided both theoretical and (cross-national) empirical underpinnings for the effects of SDIs on various political economy outcomes within authoritarian countries (e.g., economic performance and regime survival). This course tries to give students a guided tour through this recent development in the literature of comparative authoritarianism. Specifically, the course is further divided into five topics
1. Informal Institutions
2 Elections
3. Credible Power-Sharing Institutions
4. Unbundling Institutions
5. (Endogenous) Institutional Changes.
The first three topics explore both the established theories and empirical evidence (both from China-specific and cross-national studies) for the various mechanisms through which authoritarian institutions exert their effects. Moreover, in addition to critically reviewing the static analyses of authoritarian institutions and their effects, this course also tries to urge students to think more dynamically about them. First of all, can we unbundle these authoritarian institutions? Which one of them is the more fundamental cause for the political-economic outcomes on which the literature claims them to have effects? Second, how do these authoritarian institutions change? Do we need a separate theory for explaining institutional changes in authoritarian contexts? These are questions topics four and five are going to explore. This course requires students not only to read the literature critically, but also to formulate their own research questions. Consequently, student presentations will also be scheduled in the last two meetings to examine if students are able to digest the theories introduced in this class and to solve their own puzzles.