Major world events, such as the Arab Spring of 2011, the fall of
communism just over 20 years ago in Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union, and the financial crisis of 2007-09, sometimes
come as a complete surprise to almost everyone. It is of course
important to try to understand such events, but it is sometimes
not easy to know how even to begin to analyse them. However,
some recent work by economists offers considerable promise in
explaining such events. Explaining regime change In recent
years, economists have put considerable effort into explaining
regime changes and democratisation. A common explanation put
forward by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson in a number of
articles and their book (Acemoglu and Robinson 2006) is that
dictatorial regimes democratise because of a threat of
revolution by workers. According to their analysis, the ruling
elite may wish to redistribute income to workers to avert a
revolution. But a mere promise to redistribute may not be
credible since the regime could renege on its pr