(iPoster) Does Seizing Property Secure Power? Confiscation and Authoritarian Resilience

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  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of revolutionary confiscation on the political economy and state-building in post-revolutionary states. Revolutionary movements are often described as collective action aimed at addressing corruption, achieving independence, promoting democracy, freedom, and social justice, and paving the way for economic development. They affect the structure of states both institutionally and ideologically. While some post-revolutionary states tend to transform societal structures, others adapt to societal changes. There is a specific revolutionary practice that occurs during some revolutions. Revolutionaries begin confiscating property—including land, factories, and other assets—of officials and affiliates of the previous regime. They ratify and enforce laws that authorize confiscation. Confiscation becomes a routine regulatory measure within the state's policy framework. These revolutions establish various institutions to organize, institutionalize, and systematically confiscate property, land, firms, and even houses. While the scholarship identifies various post-revolutionary policies, practices, and transformations, especially in terms of democratization, democratic backsliding, and economic development, the causes and outcomes of revolutionary confiscation, as well as its theoretical and practical implications, have been largely overlooked.
This paper asks: how does confiscation affect state-building and the political economy of post-revolutionary states? Using an original dataset on 54 cases of revolutions since World War II, I employ statistical analysis to test the effects of confiscation on both political economy and state-building in post-revolutionary states. The paper introduces confiscation as a key explanatory variable to explain why and how revolutionary practices reshape post-revolutionary states. I introduce a new measure of revolutionary confiscation (the confiscation index) and argue that the implementation of confiscation during the revolutionary stage increases resistance against regime change. Such states are more likely to reinforce electoral authoritarianism than states without prior experience of confiscation. Post-revolutionary states are also more likely to experience corruption and to implement socialist rather than liberal economic policies when they undergo confiscation at the revolutionary stage.

Author

• Mohammad Sayyadi, Florida International University