Bounded Exit and Voice in North Korea.

The Hirschman‐inspired literature on exit and voice often assume that citizens of a highly restrictive, autocratic regime exercise few options to exit the country ('border crossing') or to voice their discontent. This assumption neglects a sustained economic crisis, which exposes the limitations of traditional, state‐run organizations and increases public demand for border crossings. To survive such a crisis, we theorize that more‐authoritarian (autocratic) regimes encourage bounded exit (crossing) options that tie citizens legally and financially to the incumbent country; and that bounded exit options enhance citizen voices in the autocratic regime and help alter incumbent rules. We formulate our theory both deductively and inductively: deductively from the literatures on exit and voice, crises (critical junctures), historical institutionalism, and communist autocracies; and inductively from published data related to North Korea. We develop and assess propositions with secondary analysis of governmental statistics and the literature on North Korea's famine (1994–98), border crossings and marketization. Data limitations notwithstanding, this paper outlines a theoretically novel pathway linking crisis, exit, voice, rules changes and autocratic regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]