Abstract
Rulers face challenges in governing distant or hostile populations. In response, they may coopt elites from those groups into relationships of indirect rule, thereby boosting their perceived legitimacy and ensuring compliance with their policies. Because a ruler’s goals diverge from a hostile population’s preferences, an important tension results: the elite’s cooperation becomes more valuable to the ruler, but their ability to foster compliance is strained. How does that tension influence the ruler’s governance strategy and the resulting bargain between the ruler and the elite? I construct a model of cooptation showing that a legitimating elite’s bargaining power is non-monotonic with respect to preference divergence between a ruler and the citizenry. Bargaining power for the elite is increasing in preference divergence at low levels and falls discontinuously once divergence passes a threshold. Preference divergence therefore carries implications for rulers’ institutional choice, as cooptation is only viable at intermediate levels of popular discontent. I apply the model to the Ottoman Empire’s system of indirect rule and show that it explains several features of regime-elite relations.
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Data and code has been uploaded to the author’s website: https://sites.duke.edu/broman/files/2021/07/Coopt_Rep.zip.
Notes
My interest here is in situations when preferences are in tension, so I will not focus on preference formation, without disputing its importance. Instead, I will take preferences as exogenous and fixed.
A shared ideal point is a simplifying assumption, which keeps the model tractable. However, it is not critical for the results: as long as E’s ideal point is sufficiently close to P that E can credibly turn down R’s proposal, the logic of the model holds.
The framework is similar to Rubin (2017) in modeling coercion and legitimacy as substitutes, as well as to Pant (2018) in modeling a bargain between a regime and elite with divergent preferences. It differs from those models in its focus on how divergence affects an elite’s ability to secure compliance, along with its downstream effects on outcomes. Additionally, note that elites here do not play a coordinative role between populations. The model is appropriate for scenarios in which the population is capable of organizing resistance without elite coordination, for example in tight-knit populations or those where alternative leaders are available. Assessing how elite coordination alters the logic of the model is a path for future work.
In particular, in order for R to coerce, it must be the case that \(c<(1-\phi )(x_p-x_r)^2\).
In particular, it must be the case that \(\beta >(x_r-x_p)^2\), that is, that the value of \(\beta\) exceeds the value of preference divergence.
Whenever \((x_p-x_r)^2 \le \frac{k}{\phi }\), an offer of \(L=0\) will be accepted.
The discussion raises interesting dynamic incentives for the two actors that the model, as a static game, does not capture fully. It is in an elite’s interest, for example, to exaggerate preference divergence between the regime and population in order to maximize her bargaining power. Additionally, the regime must convince the elite and the citizenry that it is willing to coerce in order to reap the benefits of legitimation.
Some historians have pointed out that the term millet was not used until the Empire’s end, on which basis they argue that the system itself did not exist or is misrepresented (Braude 1982). Recent work has acknowledged that the “system” was fluid rather than constitutional in nature, but accepts it as a useful concept that captures a method of rule (Karabiçak 2021; Tellan 2012).
Gennadios, appointed directly by Mehmet, was an exception (Zachariadou 2006).
Recall that increases to preference divergence and to the probability that resistance succeeds have similar comparative statics in the model.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the editors and two reviewers for their comments, which improved the paper, as well as to Caterina Chiopris, Timur Kuran, and Georg Vanberg for helpful discussions and feedback.
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Broman, B. Social elites, popular discontent, and the limits of cooptation. Public Choice 190, 281–299 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-021-00935-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-021-00935-5