[uucbnkol] Democracy and famines

Amartya Sen posits that democracy causes the lack of famines.  What if the causality goes the other direction?  Famines happen for exogenous reasons and when they do, they destroy fledgling democracies, or prevent a transition to them.

The mechanism could be famines, or bad conditions preceding the straw-on-camel's-back famine, allow demagogues to seize power and exercise it in a way to maintain power.  Later famines only cause other demogogues to seize power.

Look for correlation between democratic governments and risk for exogenously caused famines.