What shall we do with the bad dictator?

Working paper

Recently, the international community has increased its commitment to prosecute malicious dictators - for example by establishing the International Criminal Court. This has raised the international community's loss associated with being time-inconsistent (i.e.: granting amnesties ex post), the idea being that a reduced prospect of amnesty deters dictators from committing atrocities ex ante. Simultaneously, however, this elects dictators of a worse type. Moreover, when the costs of being time-inconsistent are lower than those associated with keeping the dictator in place, the international community will still grant amnesty - thereby making the effective punishment function non-monotonic. Consequently, increased commitment to ex post punishment may actually induce dictators to worsen their behaviour, purely to "unlock" the amnesty option by forcing the international community into time-inconsistency.

Authors: Willems, T; Larcom, S; Sarr, M

• Publication status: Published
• Publisher: University of Oxford
• Series: Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series
• Publication date: 2013-09-12
• Paper number: 671
• Keywords: institutions; dictatorship; international criminal court; time-inconsistency; amnesty