How do organized interests contribute to unequal representation in contemporary democracies? We discuss two central channels: the selection of partisan legislators through elections and postelectoral influence via lobbying. We argue that these channels are potentially complementary strategies used by rational actors. Employing a game-theoretic model and simulations of interest group influence on legislative voting, we show that this logic may explain interest group strategies in unequal times. Our model implies that interest group strategies vary with party polarization and it highlights a challenge for empirical research on unequal representation and the literature on lobbying. Using statistical models commonly used in the literature to study biases in legislative voting or policy adoption, researchers are likely to overstate the relevance of elections as a channel through which groups affect legislative responsiveness and understate the role interest groups’ postelectoral influence. Our results stress the importance of theoretical models capturing the strategic behavior of political actors as a guiding light for the empirical study of mechanisms of unequal representation.

This chapter integrates the notion of “theory” into the causal-model framework that we use in the book. We describe an approach in which theoretical claims are thought of as model justifications within a hierarchy of causal models. The approach has implications for the consistency of inferences across models and for assessing when and how theory is useful for strengthening causal claims.

This chapter develops a formal model of autocratic propaganda. Citizens are uncertain about the link between policy and outcomes, and hence the regime’s performance. Citizens are also uncertain about the regime’s capacity for repression. Autocrats use propaganda to shape citizens’ beliefs about both. Where relatively binding electoral constraints compel autocrats to employ propaganda to curry support, their propaganda apparatuses must acquire credibility by conceding bad news and policy failures. We refer to this as “honest propaganda.” In the absence of electoral constraints, autocrats employ absurd propaganda, which signals to citizens that the regime has no need for their support: that its hold on power rests on coercion, not persuasion. Our theory generates a range of predictions about how propaganda strategies change with features of the autocrat’s strategic environment, including the threats posed by elite coups and alternative sources of information to citizens.

Target governments can reduce grievances among disaffected populations who might otherwise pledge support to a group. Incorporating this into the workhorse model, we show an unexpected relationship between the total number of groups and total violence observed. When few groups exist, the target state has little incentive to reduce grievances. Due to the lack of competition, the government calculates that paying that price in violence is worth offering fewer concessions. In contrast, when many groups exist, the competition instills great fear in the target state. As a result, it may calculate that entirely abandoning the objectionable policy is the best solution. Without any supporters to recruit, the groups then drop their violence outputs. Thus, violence may decrease in the number of competing groups because violence deters the government. We characterize the circumstances under which the deterrent effect dominates the competition effect and provide broader tips for the empirical literature on outbidding.

This chapter develops the workhorse model we explore throughout the book. We begin by substantively motivating many aspects of competitive violence: the marketplace has limited resources, violence is costly but increases a group’s share of those resources, opposing violence decreases one’s own share, and others. These components lead us to conclude that a "contest" model is ideal to study the implications of competition. Doing so allows us to recover a central implication from existing theories of outbidding: that more groups imply more total violence output. However, our model concludes that outbidding is a collective effect rather than an individual one. Even as total violence increases in group numbers, the per-group rate of violence drops. These central results are robust to a variety of alternative assumptions.

This chapter endogenizes a would-be militant group’s decision to enter the marketplace for violence. We show that an existing group may overproduce violence to corner the market and make its potential rivals calculate that recuperating their costs will be impossible. As a result, violence may be greater when we observe one group than when we observe many. We then investigate four ways in which a target government might mitigate the violence: offensive measures that undermine the lead group’s marginal cost of violence, defensive measures that absorb a portion of all violence, deterrent measures that increase the cost of group formation, and concessions to the group’s audience to reduce grievances. Of these, only specific types of defensive measures are guaranteed to decrease violence. In contrast, increasing the burden of entry and decreasing grievances can counterintuitively increase violence.

This chapter develops my theory of regime-contingent sovereign default by focusing on two strategies of mass politics:voting and revolt.I argue that partitioning citizens into urban versus rural agents aligns closely with traditional accounts of groups with advantages in these two strategies:specifically, urban citizens are generally considered to enjoy advantages for protest activity, whereas rural citizens have frequently been identified as crucial swing voters.After noting that these groups differ in their preferences for food price policy, I link the pressure from urban revolt to sovereign default in autocracies, particularly those that import a great deal of food.Conversely, rural electoral pressure often leads to large farm price supports which can be difficult to remove during fiscal crisis, suggesting that more rural democracies (especially those that export a great deal of costly food) should be more likely to default.The chapter concludes by also considering variation within regimes:electoral autocracies are argued to dilute the sole focus of autocrats on urban areas, whereas contentious democracies should lead to reduced emphasis on rural voters.