Should we kill the king?

Are autocratic leaders an impediment to democratisation? An intriguing question, which some economists have recently sought to answer.

A year ago a JPE article by Harvard's Ben Olken on corruption in Indonesia attracted attention for its innovative appproach. The American magazine has a profile of him by Michael Moynihan, Graft Paper, discussing this and other research, including a paper co-written with Northwestern's Ben Jones, Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War (PDF). Moynihan summarises it thus:

Olken and Jones looked at the effects of political assassination, using a strict empirical methodology that takes into account economic conditions at the time of the killing and what Olken calls a “novel data set” of assas­sination attempts, successful and unsuccessful, between 1875 and 2004.

Olken and Jones discovered that a country was “more likely to see democratization follow­ing the assassination of an autocratic leader,” but found no substantial “effect following assassinations—or assassination attempts—on democratic leaders.” They concluded that “on average, successful assassinations of autocrats produce sustained moves toward democracy.” The researchers also found that assassinations have no effect on the inauguration of wars, a result that “suggests that World War I might have begun regardless of whether or not the attempt on the life of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 had succeeded or failed.”

The whole article is worth a read - as are Olken's other papers.