Contrary to expectations following the end of the Cold War, several autocracies have modernized without succumbing to democratizing pressures. This paper argues that a non-trivial number of 21st-century autocrats generate reputations for economic delivery via large-scale infrastructure due to its observability, tangibility, and durability as an asset, providing rulers with a credible commitment device for continued development while retaining authoritarian political institutions. I evaluate a central implication of this argument using geolocated data on 150,000 large-scale construction projects since 2005 and micro-level attitudes from nine harmonized survey datasets, covering 2.5 million respondents across 2,300 subnational districts. Exploiting within-district variation, I find that effective project delivery increases perceived government performance, with effects concentrated among established autocracies and democratic backsliders.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Chris Dann is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Stanford University and is a current pre-doctoral fellow with the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). Before graduate school he received a BSc from the London School of Economics and an MSc at the University of Oxford. He then returned to LSE for two years as a pre-doctoral fellow, working for economist Professor Sir Tim Besley. His research interests lie in the political economy of large-scale infrastructure investments and how these shape the social contract.