What is it about?
This paper seeks to explain variation in agricultural policy across regime type. It argues that socio-economic structures and institutions interact to generate policy outcomes. Because authoritarian governments are less responsive to electoral incentives and thus to the interests of the rural population, they implement urban-biased policies that decrease returns to farmers compared to democracies, on average. However, higher levels of agricultural support occur under autocracy when landholding inequality creates a small, powerful landed elite. Income inequality generates redistributive pressure under democracy and hampers food consumers’ ability to mobilize against authoritarian regimes, also leading to relatively high levels of support for agriculture among autocracies. When urban interests are powerful, autocracies provide lower levels of agricultural support than do democracies, which also implies lower food prices.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
Agricultural policy-making is an important but under-explored aspect of authoritarian rule. This paper advances a theory which can explain a wide range of variation in these policies.
Perspectives
Arguments about dictatorship and urban bias are very influential in theories of the political economy of development and democratization. This paper shows under which conditions urban bias is likely to arise, and when it is not.
Henry Thomson
Arizona State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Food and Power: Agricultural Policy under Democracy and Dictatorship, Comparative Politics, January 2017, Comparative Politics,
DOI: 10.5129/001041517820201387.
You can read the full text:
Resources
MPSA 2017, An Interview with Henry Thomson
Henry Thomson of University of Oxford, the recipient of MPSA's Best Paper in International Relations, shares highlights of his research in this interview from the 2017 MPSA conference in Chicago
BBC World Service: The Food Chain
How do authoritarian regimes use food to control and manipulate? In the first of two episodes exploring food and power, we find out how changes to the global economy mean food policy under dictatorships could soon look quite different. Plus, how do you write about food when there isn't any? Emily Thomas talks to a Venezuelan food writer who says her country's food story speaks volumes about the political situation, and explains why she continues to blog about restaurants, despite hunger being rife. In a country where people are afraid to say what they think, we hear why food writing can mean freedom.
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
