Expropriation is easy while targeted compensation demands sophisticated state capacity.

Evidence

However, a compensation scheme involves a fairly sophisticated system of targeting, while expropriation, especially in its more brutal form, can be rather easy to accomplish to the extent that the government has the monopoly of coercion, a monopoly which will itself increase with more insulation. — Philippe Aghion, Alberto Alesina, and Francesco Trebbi, Endogenous Political Institutions, 159

Categorization

• QUESTION: If coercion and targeting share fiscal roots, at what point does building compensation capacity also arm the expropriator?