What explains the emergence and persistence of institutions aimed at preventing any ruling group from using the state apparatus to advance particularistic interests? To answer this recurring question, a burgeoning literature examines the establishment of power-sharing institutions in societies divided by ethnic or religious cleavages. Going beyond existing scholarly work focused on these specific settings, we argue that political power-sharing institutions can also be the result of common disputes within the economic elite. We propose that these institutions are likely to emerge and persist when competition between elite factions with dissimilar economic interests is balanced. To address the possibility of endogeneity between elite configurations and public institutions, we leverage natural resource diversity as an instrument for elite configurations. We show that, where geological resources are more diverse, competition between similarly powerful economic groups is more likely to emerge, leading ultimately to the establishment of power-sharing mechanisms that allow elite groups to protect their diverging economic interests.

什么解释了旨在阻止任何统治集团利用国家机器来推进特殊利益的制度的出现和持续存在？为了回答这个反复出现的问题，新兴的文献考察了在种族或宗教分歧的社会中建立权力分享机构的情况。除了专注于这些特定环境的现有学术工作之外，我们认为政治权力分享机构也可能是经济精英内部共同争端的结果。我们认为，当具有不同经济利益的精英派系之间的竞争达到平衡时，这些机构可能会出现并持续存在。为了解决精英配置和公共机构之间内生性的可能性，我们利用自然资源多样性作为精英配置的工具。我们表明，在地质资源更加多样化的地方，同样强大的经济群体之间的竞争更有可能出现，最终导致权力分享机制的建立，使精英群体能够保护他们不同的经济利益。