The larger the winning coalition, the more efficient it is for leaders to rule by producing public goods rather than private rewards, because there are too many cronies to bribe individually — coalition size acts as the implicit price of private goods, which de Tocqueville observed.

causalpending

Speaker

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

Evidence Quote

you can think of the size of the coalition as the implicit price of private goods and so as the coalition gets bigger the price goes up

Source

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on Democracies and Dictatorships 2/12/2007EconTalk
Created: 6/15/2026, 9:20:39 AM

My Notes

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