Why do some autocratic governments do better than others in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI)? The received wisdom holds that democracies enjoy advantages over autocracies when it comes to attracting FDI. But there exist autocratic countries that attract substantial amounts of FDI. For example, during the last two decades, about half of the top 20 non-OECD host countries are nondemocratic. Focusing on the role of commitment institutions by which host countries can commit their protection of foreign assets, I argue that autocrats with long time horizons can provide stronger institutions to protect property rights. This allows them to attract more FDI. Using an error correction model (EDM) covering autocratic countries from 1970 to 2008, I find evidence that strongly supports my argument. These findings suggest that what matters to foreign investors is not regime type per se but specific institutional features of the host country. Insofar as host countries provide sound institutions to protect foreign assets, they would be able to attract more foreign investment.

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This article examines how foreign direct investment (FDI) affects the likelihood of authoritarian leaders’ political survival. We argue that FDI reduces the likelihood of experiencing political challenges from elites. We present two mechanisms for this claim. First, the host governments of authoritarian regimes can use FDI for long-term private good provision, so that FDI helps them to appease elite dissents and to buy off potential elite challengers. Second, FDI mitigates a commitment problem between elites and authoritarian leadership by creating an FDI-related distributional coalition, which in turn makes political defections costly to both parties. Our empirical tests using various two-stage estimators show that FDI significantly decreases the likelihood of elite-driven authoritarian leadership failure and coup attempt.

Leaders who can accumulate audience costs can send costly signals that may help alleviate information problems associated with crisis escalation. We argue that research examining the effect of audience costs fails to appreciate the theoretical context in which audience costs matter. Audience costs may help alleviate information problems associated with international conflict. However, credible commitment problems are more central than information problems for some international conflicts. Theory does not expect audience costs to matter in this context; as a result, extant tests, and many criticisms, of the effect of audience costs on crisis escalation are flawed. We offer a more appropriate test of the effect of audience costs on crisis escalation. Consistent with extant theoretical arguments, we find that audience costs only reduce the likelihood of conflict when credible commitment problems are not the dominant concern motivating a dispute or crisis.

In the past several years, the Republic of Korea—a former least developed country (LDC) and aid recipient that became a donor—joined the “club of emerging donors” to Africa. In March 2006, President Roh Moohyun declared Korea's Initiative for Africa's Development. The initiative puts poverty reduction and socioeconomic development of African countries in the forefront. Using pooled cross-sectional time series data, in this study we examine the determinants of Korean bilateral official development assistance (ODA) to Africa for the period 1991–2011. The findings of the study suggest that the approach of Korean ODA does not differ significantly from that of many conventional donors whose ODA disbursement has had a dual purpose: to improve the welfare of developing countries and to serve self-interests.