A rent-seeking perspective on imperial peace
通过一个寻租竞赛模型，研究多族群帝国中“帝国和平”现象，解释为何在资源被大量抽取的情况下仍能维持稳定，以及帝国崩溃后族群暴力激增的原因。
Abstract I model a rent-seeking contest among two “identity ideologues,” differentially located along an identity continuum, and a “kleptocrat,” who can choose any location in-between. The contest jointly awards an identity-relevant good (religion) and an identity-irrelevant good (money). The kleptocrat values only money, the ideologues value both money and religion. The ideologues are worse off when the winner is located farther away. The kleptocrat can be arbitrarily more successful in the contest than the ideologues, even with a cost disadvantage. A decline in the kleptocrat’s cost of contest effort reduces conflict. Both ideologues lose in success probability, but gain in expected utility. Elimination of the kleptocrat increases conflict and makes the ideologues more successful yet worse off. My results rationalize “imperial peace” despite “imperial drain”—peace and stability within multi-ethnic empires despite significant resource extraction, and explain why imperial collapse is often associated with a sharp escalation in ethnic violence.