This dissertation studies the role of incentives and institutions in comparative and international politics.; The chapter "Lies, Defection, and the Pattern of International Cooperation" studies how incentives to lie affect international cooperation and the design of cooperation agreements. I study the optimal structure of cooperation agreements in an environment where the costs of cooperation are private information, fluctuate over time, and participants can benefit from lying about them. I show that democracies face greater contracting opportunities than authoritarian regimes. However, even under asymmetries of information, a limited extent of cooperation can be achieved when the design of cooperation agreements recognizes incentives to lie.; The chapter "Robust Constitutions: Endogenous Voting and Delegation under the Lack of Enforcement" examines the relationship between two general features of political organization: the extent of pooling of joint decision making through voting, and the extent of delegation within political institutions. I study a political environment where the voting outcomes can not be enforced by an outside mechanism such as courts or the police. I apply the insights from formal analysis to the study of transitions to democracy, and discuss extensions relevant to the study of federalism and international organizations.; The chapter "Leadership Dynamics in Authoritarian Regimes" studies the consequences of intra-elite competition for political organization and government change in dictatorships. I present a theoretical model in which the joint desire of the dictator and the elite to rule is complicated by a conflict of interest between these two groups. By exploiting the office, the dictator may acquire more power at the expense of the elite. The elite may attempt to deter such opportunism by threatening a coup. The credibility of this threat critically depends the role of the balance of power between the dictator and the elite and the temptation of the elite to reconsider a coup that it has already threatened. I present and explain two empirical patterns of leader tenure in authoritarian regimes: short tenure with frequent replacement that typically follows an economic downturn, and long tenure with replacement unrelated to the performance of the economy.
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