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MWANGIS. KIMENYI
Departmentof Economics,Universityof Connecticut,Storrs,CT 06269
JOHN M. MBAKU
Departmentof Economics, WeberState University,Ogden, VT84408
1. Introduction
* We are gratefulto Mark Toma, Gordon Tullock, StephenDrew Smith, Bob Collinge and
participantsof the rent seeking panel held at the 1990 meetingsof the SouthernEconomic
Associationfor theirhelpfulcomments.Remainingerrorsare our responsibility.
2. Interestgroupsand rent-seekingequilibrium
3. Institutionalstability:Some tentativeevidence
where
the restof the population.The higherthis number,the less likelythat the mili-
tary will attemptto changethe rent shares.Neverthelessthis may also lead to
internalcompetitionwithinthe militarywhich would resultin instability.
SOCIVmeasuresthe size of the militaryin termsof civilianspersoldier.The
smallerthe value of SOCIV,the largerthe size of the militaryrelativeto the
civilianpopulation.On the one hand, a largemilitarywouldbe expectedto be
associatedwith stabilitybecauseof the abilityof the largemilitaryto suppress
possibleriotsby the urbanpopulation.On the otherhand,a largemilitarymay
be more difficult to control and is more likely to be associatedwith internal
strugglefor power. We thereforeare not able to predictthe effect of the size
of the militarya priori.
We have includedother possibleexplanatoryvariablessuch as the popula-
tion (POP), populationdensity(DENSITY),income(PY), growthrate of the
gross nationalproduct(GNPG), shareof incomeoriginatingfrom the public
sector(SCG),and a controlvariablefor whetherthe leadercameto powerby
means of a militarycoup (BYCOUP).Populationdensityand the aggregate
populationare includedto control for the cost of organizinginterestgroups.
The per capita income is used to control for differencesin instabilitydue to
differencesin the level of economicdevelopment.We would expectmore ad-
vancedcountriesto be more stable. Likewise,the rate of growthof gross na-
tional productis expectedto inceasethe survivalprobabilitiesof regimes.Sim-
ply, economic declines would be expectedto create instabilityas different
groupsin the populationattemptto maintaintheirshareof rentsduringtimes
of declining rents. To the extent that the bureaucracycan destabilizethe
government,the largerthe shareof nationalproductoriginatingfromthe pub-
lic sector, the more the rents flowing to this group and hence the lower the
probabilitythat instabilitywill originatefrom the bureaucracy.10 Finally, we
expectregimes that come to powerby way of a militarycoup to be more unsta-
ble. This is primarilybecausethere is often more competitionfor leadership
within the military.
The Appendixdetailsthe calculationof some of the variablesand the data
sources.Althoughthereare44 countriesin the sample,the studyincludesa to-
tal of 102regimesfor whichrelevantinformationon the variousvariablesare
availableor can be computedwith a fair degreeof confidence.Thus although
some countrieshave had severaldifferentregimes,some of those regimesare
not includedin the studyif data correspondingto the durationof a regimeare
not available.11Thus the variablesused in the estimationreferto specificre-
gimesand varieseven in the samecountrydependingon the regime.However,
variablessuch as religioushomogeneity(RELHOM)(whichmay changeover
time but only slowly), and ethnic homogeneity (ETHNHOM) (which remains
fairly constant over time) are held constant for all regimes in the same country.
The urban population (URBAN), percentage of gross national product ori-
1 2 3
1 2
4. Conclusion
Notes
References
Appendix
A. Samplecountriesused in the study
B. Data sources
C. Variables
where
L = size (07%)
of the largestreligiousgroup;
S = size (%1o)
of the secondlargestreligiousgroup;
C = L + S (% of the two largestgroups).
A 100 0 0 100
B 40 30 30 7
C 60 20 20 32
D 60 30 10 27
E 90 5 5 70.75
where
Country L S T F ETHNHOM
A 100 0 0 0 100
B 50 50 0 0 25
C 80 20 0 0 68
D 50 30 20 0 38
E 30 30 30 5 27
F 20 10 10 2 6
Notice that in E and F, the smallestgroupsare not includedin the calculationbecausethey are
consideredas noncompetinggroups.
where
A 12 0 0 144
B 12 2 1 131
C 10 2 4 78
D 2 0 0 4