Two experiments investigated the tendency of groups with members under high (vs. low) need for cognitive closure to develop an autocratic leadership structure in which some members dominate the discussion, constitute the "hubs" of communication, and influence the group more than other members. The first experiment found that high (vs. low) need for closure groups, as assessed via dispositional ...

Continuing revelations about Joseph Stalin’s reign have led many historians to rank him the greatest mass murderer of our century and possibly of all time. But a growing body of evidence indicates that they are probably mistaken: Mao Zedong, the dictator of Communist China for nearly thirty years, appears to have outdone his Russian counterpart after only a dozen years in power. Two recent book...

Some autocracies are economically successful; others stagnate at low levels of production. Paradoxically, the latter ones appear to possess more natural resources and be more resistant to political change. This paper adresses a dynamic relation between the capital accumulation and the political regime in presence of resource rents. It argues that private capital accumulation increases an unfett...

The prospect of water wars and conflict over water are ideas that are frequently dramatized in media and also studied by scholars. It is well-established that bona fide wars are not started over water resources, but conflict over water does exist and is not well understood. One would suppose, as scholars often do, that dyads composed of two democratic nations would be the best at mitigating con...

The purpose this study was to survey relationship of coach’s Leadership Style and player performance outcomes. The research was descriptive. The population consisted of sport coaches Tabriz city of Iran in 2011. The sample was selected suing by convenience sampling. The instruments for data collection included demographics questionnaire, Leadership Scale for Sport. The data were analyzed using ...

When the leader of an autocratic regime loses power, one of three things happens. Someone from the incumbent leadership group replaces him, and the regime persists. The incumbent leadership group is replaced by democratically elected leaders. Or the incumbent leadership group loses control to a different group that replaces it with a new autocracy. Scholarship exists on the first two kinds of t...