Summers are a good time to catch up on some literature that has taken a back seat to the work that needs to get done during the semester.
A colleague (Paola Fajardo) and I are planning on a summer reading group starting in July. The goal is to become more familiar with human rights or repression literature from a comparative institutional perspective. We both have background in the literature that tackles this subject matter with global analysis, so we’d like to turn our attention this summer to the nuts and bolts of repressive policy outcomes and the decision-making processes that lead to them. We’re starting out with Christian Davenport‘s State Repression and the Domestic Democratic Peace (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and then revisiting Ronald Wintrobe‘s The Political Economy of Dictatorship (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
What’s on your summer reading list? Let us know with a comment. Suggestions for Paola and I are more than welcome, as well.
I just received my copy of Mathematics for Economists at St. Louis. I hope to spend some time on it each week this summer to re-establish what I already know and build any foundations that might be missing. As far as specific recommendations for your reading group, I will try to post a few items later that might be worth taking a look at.
Hi folks,
While at EITM together Michael pointed me to your blog, which looks great. He wondered if I had some things to add to this reading list on comparative political economy of human rights and repression. I can name some of the quantitative theorists that I’ve been reading. You can peruse their stuff on their webpages and see what looks interesting.
If we are talking general frameworks to explain origins and dynamics of repression, I find Acemoglu and Robinson’s framework far and away the most compelling. You can either try to tackle all of “Economic origins…” or just look at one of the many associated papers that you can find on either Acemoglu’s or Robinson’s website. Looks like Acemoglu posts his lecture notes on political economy of institutions online, which should be a treasure trove. The framework used by both Carles Boix (“Democracy and Redistribution”) and by Thad Dunning is essentially the same as A-R’s, and their stuff is also really good. Other quantitative theoretical work on repression that I’ve been reading include recent stuff by Konstantin Sonin as well as Przeworski’s newer stuff (e.g. the papers with Gandhi). Some of the modeling in this stuff is pretty heavy-going, although nearly all of it is covered in Fudenberg and Tirole.
Cheers
Thanks for the suggestions, Cyrus. I didn’t know that Acemoglu had lecture notes posted on his website–that will probably be very helpful for me!