my instinct is to interpret winning coalition as everyone supporting those in power, including those who have very little power.
That’s exactly what the winning coalition is supposed to mean. It’s the base of supporters the leader chooses to satisfy the minimum coalition size requirement in their state. They’re not supposed to be elites.
In autocracies/monarchies they often are elites, as there’s a lot of inequality and only a few get big private rewards. Also, if you’re rich and not part of the coalition your wealth is likely to get taken away from you.
In democracies the coalition is too large for most of them to be elites, pretty much by definition of “elite”, and also someone can become an elite without supporting the leadership.
So the selectorate is indeed the potential coalition members, even though that doesn’t mean they’re potential elites (at least not with as much probability). In autocracies many have a very small chance of getting into the coalition, in monarchies few have a big chance, and in democracies many have a big chance.
So both p(is coalition member|elite) and p(is elite|is coalition member) are lower in democracies than autocracies.
What you might find missing in the theory is some representation of elites, as the theory treats all coalition members as equally important (except in the case of correlated voting, but that probably doesn’t cover it), when in reality that’s clearly not the case—A campaign donor is vastly more important than any single voter in democracies. It would be interesting to see what happens if you put the selectorate on a distribution for the importance of their support.
I don’t think this makes the word keys inadequate, but the word they use in the dictator’s handbook to describe the members of the coalition is “essentials”.
“That’s exactly what the winning coalition is supposed to mean”
I suppose that if that’s the interpretation then my issue is that sometimes—at according to the summary—it seems like he would be analysing the support base when discussing the elites would be more relevant.
Possibly! I would like to see an analysis that models elites somehow, and what it would give us. I tried to do a quick search for articles that tackled the question of elites and selectorate theory and found ‘Elites, Voters, and Democracies at War’
That’s exactly what the winning coalition is supposed to mean. It’s the base of supporters the leader chooses to satisfy the minimum coalition size requirement in their state. They’re not supposed to be elites.
In autocracies/monarchies they often are elites, as there’s a lot of inequality and only a few get big private rewards. Also, if you’re rich and not part of the coalition your wealth is likely to get taken away from you.
In democracies the coalition is too large for most of them to be elites, pretty much by definition of “elite”, and also someone can become an elite without supporting the leadership.
So the selectorate is indeed the potential coalition members, even though that doesn’t mean they’re potential elites (at least not with as much probability). In autocracies many have a very small chance of getting into the coalition, in monarchies few have a big chance, and in democracies many have a big chance.
So both p(is coalition member|elite) and p(is elite|is coalition member) are lower in democracies than autocracies.
What you might find missing in the theory is some representation of elites, as the theory treats all coalition members as equally important (except in the case of correlated voting, but that probably doesn’t cover it), when in reality that’s clearly not the case—A campaign donor is vastly more important than any single voter in democracies. It would be interesting to see what happens if you put the selectorate on a distribution for the importance of their support.
I don’t think this makes the word keys inadequate, but the word they use in the dictator’s handbook to describe the members of the coalition is “essentials”.
“That’s exactly what the winning coalition is supposed to mean”
I suppose that if that’s the interpretation then my issue is that sometimes—at according to the summary—it seems like he would be analysing the support base when discussing the elites would be more relevant.
Possibly! I would like to see an analysis that models elites somehow, and what it would give us. I tried to do a quick search for articles that tackled the question of elites and selectorate theory and found ‘Elites, Voters, and Democracies at War’