The Selectorate Theory, Domestic Distribution and the External Exploitation of Autocratic Governments - An Empirical Investigation

Theorists of political economy have argued that the systemic difference between democracies and autocracies with respect to the sizes of their winning coalitions result in different distributional patterns of national wealth among the members of a society. Accordingly, democratic leaders tend to produce more public goods, while autocrats depend in their survival on satisfying important interest groups with private goods. Parting from these considerations, this paper extends the selectorate theory to foreign policy and argues that, by addressing the respective winning coalition, autocracies are easier to exploit from outside than democracies. This theoretical reasoning is examined in three comparative case studies. The paper tests the empirical implications of the theory by looking on how three Asian developing countries with different coalition sizes are addressed by and react to the interests of a more powerful external player, China. The paper finds that the Chinese government adapts its external behaviour to the specific distributional patterns of its counterpart. In autocratic countries, where coalition members make sure to prevail over state institutions in channelling and sacking external resources, China specifically addresses the needs of the coalition members. In larger coalition systems, in contrast, China addresses a wider audience. The analysis also indicates that the Chinese government finds it indeed easier to realise its external interests in small coalition settings, while it meets more resistance in larger coalition systems.