Autocratic Consitutions: A Summary

Autocratic constitutions can help dictators:
- Consolidate power.
- Increase investment.
- Boost economic development.
- Generate rents for themselves and cronies.
This challenges views that constitutions in dictatorships are mere window-dressing.
Constitutions can foster self-enforcing stability in autocratic regimes alongside repression, cooptation, and clientelism.

Consolidate the inner ranks of the autocratic regime by fostering loyalty and trust.
Outline limits on executive authority, codify individual rights, and impose constraints on executive authority.
Serve as coordinating devices for elites who helped the dictator gain power.

Constitution creation under dictatorship enables autocratic coalitions to co-opt threats and last longer.
Associated with stronger property rights protection, higher private investment rates, and economic growth.
Qualitative evidence supports that constitutions weaken alternative power sources and provide clearer property rights definitions to the dictator's support organization.

Successful dictators rely on institutions that generate trust and create stable distributional arrangements.
Protecting property rights of the launching organization (LO) members is key.
Dictators tolerate institutions that make them vulnerable to cultivate supporters’ trust and legitimize rule.
Elections can enable credible power-sharing, increasing the political leverage of core supporters.
Limits on executive authority can lower borrowing costs and spur capital market development.

The most serious threat to dictators comes from within their support coalition.
Two stages of autocratic rule:
- Resolution of uncertainty over the dictator’s loyalty.
- Institutionalization of a system for distributing spoils of office.
Expropriating the preexisting elite (PE) signals loyalty to the launching organization (LO).
Constitutions codify rights and interests of political groups and organizations.
The LO pushes for a constitution at the beginning of a new regime.

Enshrine and enforce LO property rights to maintain loyalty.
Establish clear rules about who qualifies as a member of the ruling group.
Establish norms regulating access to rents and codify institutions that distribute spoils of office.
Create institutions that monitor the ruler’s actions to enforce these norms.
Weaken or destroy alternative sources of political and economic power.
Grant the military a special role in politics.
Typically stipulate how power will be exercised and rotated by defining new institutions.
Regulate the allocation of property rights, the distribution of rents, and the granting of status and opportunities.

Elites should gain the ability to enforce the constitution by monitoring the executive's actions.
Support for a coup increases when an executive’s behavior threatens core “rights.”
Informal norms and formal contracts such as constitutions are synergistic.
Enable the LO to better enforce their rights and privileges than absent a constitution.

Timing, function, content, and operation of autocratic constitutions underscore differences from other autocratic institutions.
Foster loyalty and trust between the dictator and his launching organization when uncertainty is highest.
Other autocratic institutions take time to be effective and address emerging threats from the outside such as Elections, Legislatures, and political parties.
Constitutions codify rights and interests of insiders, while other institutions address emerging threats.

Autocratic constitutions ameliorate uncertainty by defining elite rights and privileges.
Constitutions should be adopted at the outset of a new autocratic coalition seizing power.
Coalitions adopting a constitution are more likely to survive longer.
Stronger property rights, economic investment, and growth following constitutional adoption.
Dictators can benefit from inheriting previous constitutions because the executive’s credible commitment is standardized among elites.

Panel dataset of Latin American dictators from 1950 to 2002.
Autocratic coalitions that adopt constitutions survive longer, have better property rights protection, and experience higher rates of private investment and economic growth.
Unit of analysis: autocratic coalition defined as a set of chronologically contiguous autocrats not interrupted by an irregular transfer of power.
Autocratic Coalition Exit: coded "1" when an autocrat coalition exits power due to coups, assassinations, popular revolt, or democratic transition.
Property rights protection: measured using contract-intensive money (CIM).
Private Investment: measured as a percentage of GDP.
Economic Growth: the logarithmic rate of growth of Per Capita Income.
Autocratic Constitutions: coded as documents explicitly identified as the constitution or fundamental law.

Autocratic constitutions increase autocratic coalition survival.
Instrumental variable approach using constituent assembly elections.
Autocratic constitutions are linked with increased property rights.
Hausman Test for endogeneity indicates no reverse causation.
Autocratic constitutions are strongly linked to higher rates of private investment.
Autocratic constitutions are linked to higher rates of economic growth through their positive impact on private investment.