Category: Uncategorized
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What Autocrats Learn from Other Countries’ Political Protests
by: Myunghee Lee and Dongjin Kwak What do autocrats do when they observe other countries’ protests? Are they only concerned about the diffusion of protests? We argue that dictators pay attention to other countries’ regime contention without the possibility of a diffusion. Autocrats use those protests to evaluate their regime’s popular uprising possibilities. Dictators suffer…
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Publicized Preventive Repression
by: Katerina Tertytchnaya Existing research suggests that preventive repression is most effective when it is invisible. Yet contemporary autocrats often publicize their failure to prevent protests. Through the use of quantitative analysis and case studies, I develop a comparative theory of how visible preventive repression aids authoritarian survival by helping autocrats to maintain support for…
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Rotten Eggs or Bad Apples: Corruption Arrests and Public Opinion in Authoritarian Russia
by: Noah Buckley In autocracies, officials’ malfeasance frequently serves as a spark for public discontent. As a result, authoritarian leaders often attempt to portray egregious cases of corruption in a positive light: these are merely a few bad apples we are already dispatching with. In this paper, I ask: when does the public view corrupt…
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Corruption and Cooptation in Autocracy: Evidence from Russia
by: David Szakonyi Do corrupt officials govern differently in elected office? This paper develops a theoretical framework and analyzes new data from financial disclosures to estimate the governing costs of corruption. First, I uncover substantial hidden wealth held by certain legislators in the Russian Duma; these ‘kompromat deputies’ are vulnerable to damaging information being used…
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The Double-Edged Sword of Power-Sharing in Autocratic Ethiopia: The EPRDF’s Regionalized Central Party Committee System
by: Josef Woldense Power-sharing is a double-edged sword in autocracies. At first, it creates stability by enticing elites to join the ruling coalition. Over time, however, it has the potential to tip the balance-of-power towards the elites and thereby leave incumbents more vulnerable to internal challenges. Our paper examines this lifecycle of power-sharing in the…
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Who Rules? Support Coalitions and Regime Survival, 1789-2020
by: Sirianne Dahlum, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Magnus B. Rasmussen and Tore Wig Leaders do not rule alone, but rely on coalitions of regime supporters to govern and remain in power. We discuss, specify, and test arguments pertaining to how size or diversity of regime support coalitions influence regime longevity. We use recently collected data on…
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Jan Pierskalla
by: Jan Pierskalla Previous research has demonstrated that ruling elites hand-pick top-level cadres from their personal networks to maximize loyalty. However, similar personal networks also exist among the hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats on lower levels of the administrative hierarchy. We undertake the first empirical analysis of such networks, focusing on a least-likely case: the…
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Making Career in Dictatorship: The Secret Logic Behind Coups and Repression
by: Adam Scharpf and Christian Gläßel Who loyally carries out the dictator’s dirty work? And which individuals actively conspire against the leader? To explain such extreme behavior, this book project investigates the inner workings of the authoritarian security apparatus and the career prospects of individual officers. Our unified theory explains participation in repression (extreme loyalty)…
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How Elite Purges Promote Consolidation of Power in Dictatorships
by: Jun Koga Sudduth How do political leaders promote the consolidation of power in dictatorships? This paper examines this question by exploring whether dictators’ efforts to control personnel via elite purges allow them to further expand their power by creating institutions loyal to the dictators. Using newly collected data on elite purges between 1980 and…
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Autoverification: Modeling the Decision to be Vetted by a Regional Purge Commission
by: Barbara Piotrowska and Monika Nalepa After regime breakdown, fledgeling democracies need to deal with the legacy of violence. In some countries, such as Poland, this process included “verification”, a screening of the agents of the repression apparatus to identify those that could apply to work in the new democratic security services. However, a form…
Authoritarian Political Systems Group 