Regime Change and Critical Junctures

In this paper we study how a society can transition between different economic and political regimes. When the current regime is elitism, the society is modeled as a collection of units of land where at each of these units there is a member of the elite and a peasant. Under the democratic regime, at each of the units of land there is a citizen whose role is to work the land and enjoy the full output he produces. At every period with some small probability a critical juncture arrives, giving a chance for a regime change. Among others, we find that a wider output gap can increase the number of different institutions that are possible after a critical juncture and that lower land profitability makes equilibria where an extractive regime continues less likely.