What shall we do with the bad dictator?

Willems T, Larcom S, Sarr M

Recently, the international community has increased its commitment to prosecute malicious dictators - for example by establishing the International Criminal Court. This has raised the international community's loss associated with being time-inconsistent (i.e.: granting amnesties ex post), the idea being that a reduced prospect of amnesty deters dictators from committing atrocities ex ante. Simultaneously, however, this elects dictators of a worse type. Moreover, when the costs of being time-inconsistent are lower than those associated with keeping the dictator in place, the international community will still grant amnesty - thereby making the effective punishment function non-monotonic. Consequently, increased commitment to ex post punishment may actually induce dictators to worsen their behaviour, purely to "unlock" the amnesty option by forcing the international community into time-inconsistency.

Keywords:

time-inconsistency

,

dictatorship

,

amnesty

,

institutions

,

international criminal court