Does the Threat of Overthrow Discipline the Elites? Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment
通过实验室实验检验“革命威胁促使精英分享财富”的经典猜想，发现高地位玩家并未因被推翻风险而增加再分配，与既有理论预期相反。
The threat of revolution disciplines the elites, inducing them to strategically share some of their wealth to prevent social unrest. This behavioral conjecture is prominently used to explain franchise extension and welfare-state expansion. We test this conjecture in a controlled laboratory experiment. We model a society whose members can produce wealth by coordinating conflicting interests. Coordination is facilitated through a status ranking. Compliance with the ranking yields an efficient yet inequitable payoff distribution. Between treatments, we vary whether overthrows—which reset the status ranking via collective disobedience—are possible and whether voluntary redistributive transfers—which high-status players can use to appease low-status players—are available. In contrast to established thinking, we find that, on average, the threat of being overthrown does not lead to more wealth sharing, as high-status players fail to provide sufficient redistribution to prevent overthrows.