Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-r6qrq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T02:54:05.207Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Radicalism in Mass Movements: Asymmetric Information and Endogenous Leadership

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 November 2020

HENG CHEN Open the ORCID record for HENG CHEN [Opens in a new window]  and
WING SUEN Open the ORCID record for WING SUEN [Opens in a new window]
HENG CHEN*
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
WING SUEN*
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
*
Heng Chen, Associate Professor of Economics, Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Hong Kong, hengchen@hku.hk.
Wing Suen, Professor of Economics, Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Hong Kong, wsuen@econ.hku.hk.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Asymmetric information and diverse preferences for reform create an agency problem between opposition leaders and citizens. Dissatisfied citizens are unsure of how bad the current situation is but infer this information from the scale of the leader’s reform proposal. Because radical leaders have an incentive to exaggerate and mislead, to command credibility, they must paradoxically radicalize the proposal further as a way of signaling the necessity of change. Radicalism motivated by signaling is costly, as it reduces a movement’s chances of success. This mechanism also contributes to leadership radicalization when the leaders of movements arise as a compromise among diverse interests.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 115 , Issue 1 , February 2021 , pp. 286 - 306
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We thank Navin Kartik, Balazs Szentes, Xianwen Shi, and seminar participants at the Asian Meeting of the Econometric Society (2019), Political Selection Workshop (2019) and Allied Social Sciences Association annual meeting (2020) for their comments. This research project is partly supported by the General Research Fund of the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Project No. 17504718) and by the Seed Fund for Basic Research of Hong Kong University (Project No. 201811159002).

References

Acemoglu, Daron, Egorov, Georgy, and Sonin, Konstantin. 2013. “A Political Theory of Populism.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 128 (2): 771–805.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banks, Jeffrey. 1990. “Monopoly Agenda Control and Asymmetric Information.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 105 (2): 445–464.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banks, Jeffrey, and Sobel, Joel. 1987. “Equilibrium Selection in Signaling Games.” Econometrica 55 (3): 647–661.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bils, Peter. 2019. “Overreacting and Posturing: How Accountability and Ideology Shape Executive Policies.” Working Paper. Princeton University.Google Scholar
Boleslavsky, Raphael, and Cotton, Christopher. 2015. “Information and Extremism in Elections.” American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 7 (1): 165–207.Google Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, Ethan. 2010. “Regime Change and Revolutionary Entrepreneurs.” American Political Science Review 104 (3): 446–466.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cho, In-Koo, and Kreps, David M.. 1987. “Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 102 (2): 179–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dapiran, Antony. 2017. City of Protest: A Recent History of Dissent in Hong Kong. Melbourne: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
DellaVigna, Stefano, List, John A., Malmendier, Ulrike, and Rao, Gautam. 2017. “Voting to Tell Others.” Review of Economic Studies 84 (1): 143–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewan, Torun, and Myatt, David P.. 2007. “Leading the Party: Coordination, Direction, and Communication.” American Political Science Review 101 (4): 827–845.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dugan, Laura, and Chenoweth, Erica. 2012. “Moving Beyond Deterrence: The Effectiveness of Raising the Expected Utility of Abstaining from Terrorism in Israel.” American Sociological Review 77 (4): 597–624.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fu, Qiang, Li, Ming, and Qiao, Xue. 2020. “On the Paradox of Mediocracy.” Working Paper. Concordia University.Google Scholar
Geddes, Barbara. 1990. “How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get: Selection Bias in Comparative Politics.” Political Analysis 2: 131–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldstone, Jack Andrew. 2001. “Toward a Fourth Generation of Revolutionary Theory.” Annual Review of Political Science 4 (1): 139–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hermalin, Benjamin E. 1998. “Toward an Economic Theory of Leadership: Leading by Example.” American Economic Review 88 (1): 1188–1206.Google Scholar
Landa, Dimitri, and Tyson, Scott A.. 2017. “Coercive Leadership.” American Journal of Political Science 61 (3): 559–574.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindbeck, Assar, and Weibull, Jörgen W.. 1987. “Balanced-Budget Redistribution as the Outcome of Political Competition.” Public Choice 52 (3): 273–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michaeli, Moti, and Spiro, Daniel. 2018. “The Dynamics of Revolutions.” Working Paper. University of Oslo.Google Scholar
Morris, Stephen, and Shadmehr, Mehdi. 2020. “Inspiring Regime Change.” Working Paper. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Ogden, Suzanne, Hartford, Kathleen, Sullivan, Nancy, and Zweig, David. 1992. China’s Search for Democracy: The Students and Mass Movement of 1989. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Rasler, Karen. 1996. “Concessions, Repression, and Political Protest in the Iranian Revolution.” American Sociological Review 61 (1): 132–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shadmehr, Mehdi. 2015. “Extremism in Revolutionary Movements.” Games and Economic Behavior 94: 97–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shadmehr, Mehdi, and Bernhardt, Dan. 2019. “Vanguards in Revolution.” Games and Economic Behavior 115: 146–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skocpol, Theda. 1979. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sunada, Ichiro. 1969. “The Thought and Behavior of Zengakuren: Trends in the Japanese Student Movement.” Asian Survey 9 (6): 457–474.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsurumi, Kazuko. 1970. “Some Comments on the Japanese Student Movement in the Sixties.” Journal of Contemporary History 5 (1): 104–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittman, Donald. 1983. “Candidate Motivation: A Synthesis of Alternative Theories.” American Political Science Review 77 (1): 142–157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Elisabeth Jean. 2003. Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar