6. Varieties of Dictatorship

Comparative Politics

Giacomo Lemoli

Pictures

Adolf Hitler (Germany) (Source: Bundesarchiv)

Mao Zedong (China)

Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore)

Paul Kagame (Rwanda) (Source: Saeima)

• Who looks more like a dictator?
• What would your grandparents say if you asked them?

Myths and Realities about Dictators

• Our imagination about dictators comes from history’s most salient dictatorships

• We tend to imagine them as all-powerful individuals holding absolute power

• In reality, they govern complex systems and need complex institutions

• Their concerns are quite simple

• Need to satisfy allies without giving them too much power

• Don’t have democratic competitors but care about citizens’ opinion

• In a word, they are still fundamentally politicians

• Understanding their politics is our goal for today

Our Plan for Today

Who dictators are

• Kings, generals, and their supporters

How they rule

• The surprising (?) prevalence of parties and elections
• From violence to media and information

Fundamental problems of authoritarian rule

• Power-sharing \(\rightarrow\) members of the support coalition
• Control \(\rightarrow\) broader society

Explaining dictators’ economic performance

Types of Dictatorship

Monarchic Dictatorships

• The dictator is a king
• Key power roles are held within the royal family
• Succession happens within the royal family

Tend to be relatively more stable. Why?

King Salman (Saudi Arabia)

Monarchic Dictatorships

Tend to be relatively more stable. Why?

• Durable access to power through intermarriage

• Everyone has an interest in government stability \(\implies\) Fewer incentives to overthrow the king

• Power sharing and succession encoded in family norms

• Family members can monitor the king \(\implies\) we will see that this solves commitment and collective action problems

Military Dictatorships

• The dictator is/was a member of the military
• Often come to power through military coups
• Motivated by threat of social unrest or economic interests

Relatively less stable. Why?

Augusto Pinochet (Chile) (Source: Min. Rel. Ext. Chile)

Military Dictatorships

Relatively less stable. Why?

• Armed forces easily split into factions

• Disagreement over everyday politics leads to conflict

• Diffused military strength makes balance of power uncertain

• Military may prefer to “allow” democracy rather than maintain power

Civilian Dictatorships

• The dictator is a civilian (not a member of the army)

• Needs to build a support base out of existing social groups and institutions

• Party-centered regimes use party organizations to distribute resources, mobilize the masses, project power

• Personality-centered regimes are organized around the dictator’s figure creating personality cults

Types of Dictatorships Over Time

Classifying Dictatorships

Changing Tools of Authoritarian Government

A Decrease in Arbitrary Violence

Violence has been the chief tool of dictatorship to quell opposition. Yet it is in decline

Mimicking Democracy

Rulers increasingly adopt democratic institutions: elections, parliaments

Why Elections?

Unlike in democracy, authoritarian elections are non-competitive

• The system is in fact rigged in favor of the incumbent
• Opposition parties are intimidated through “legal” means
  • Made-up accusations, selective arrests, restrictions to party activities
• Opposition runs but doesn’t stand any chance

What is the value of elections in such an environment?

• Controlled mobilization of society \(\rightarrow\) signals strength
• Co-opt opposition \(\rightarrow\) has access to benefits and thus a stake in the system
• Learn about high/low support areas
• Signal dictator’s popularity to the people

From Ideology to Information Control

Rather than censoring, dictators manipulate ostensibly “reliable” information

The goal is to convince educated citizens that they govern well

Fundamental Problems of Authoritarian Rule

The Problem of Authoritarian Power-Sharing

Problem of bargaining between the dictator and the support coalition

• The dictator is initially weak, needs a support coalition to rule
• SC (elites) wants access to power and resources in exchange for support
• But the dictator will likely try to consolidate its power over the coalition
  • E.g., Stalin: grabbed absolute power through purges and the execution of faction leaders
• Fearing this, elites in the SC may stage early coups, making the regime unstable
  • Risky outcome for everybody, all parties want to avoid it

The Problem of Authoritarian Power-Sharing

The bargain is plagued by familiar political problems:

• Commitment problem of the dictator \(\rightarrow\) a promise to share power today can be reneged on tomorrow
• Monitoring problem \(\rightarrow\) elites don’t know what the dictator is doing/planning, making “judgement errors” likely
• Collective action problem of the elites \(\rightarrow\) if they can’t act together against the dictator they are even weaker

Solution: institutions that transfer power to elites (e.g., parliaments, councils, politburos)

• Allow constant monitoring of the dictator, elite coordination \(\rightarrow\) Credibly threaten to punish future power grab attempts
• However, they can still be weakened or strengthened

The Problem of Authoritarian Control

Problem of managing the masses

Repression trade-offs

• Large-scale repression makes the dictator too dependent on the army
• The dictator may want to keep the army weak and build up internal security services
• Ultimately risky if social unrest becomes too large to manage (e.g., Arab Spring)

The Problem of Authoritarian Control

Problem of managing the masses

Co-optation trade-offs

• Co-optation \(\rightarrow\) grant access to benefits and resources to organized social groups to make them invested in the regime
• What we called “liberalization without democratization” (managed by soft-liners)
• Another commitment problem: resource distribution can be stopped once the threat of revolt ends
• Giving formal say to opposition parties or organizations (e.g., unions) grants them some future influence
• As we know, the trade-off is that liberalizations can become democratizations

Economic Performance

Economic Performance

• Why do dictatorships generally have worse economic performance than democracies?
• Why do we see differences in economic performances between dictatorships?
• Our scientific approach:
  • Start from variation in authoritarian institutions (power-sharing)
  • Study how rulers’ incentives to provide economic goods vary with these institutions
• For this, we will use a stylized model of political regimes: selectorate theory

Selectorate Theory

• Selectorate (\(S\)) \(\rightarrow\) group who selects the leader
• Winning Coalition (\(W\)) \(\rightarrow\) supporters needed to remain in power

Selectorate Theory: Different Regimes

• Monarchies \(\rightarrow\) low \(S\), low \(W\) (family members in both cases)
• Democracies \(\rightarrow\) high \(S\) (enfranchised), high \(W\) (majority of voters)

The Loyalty Calculus

• The dictator needs to redistribute resources to \(W\) to stay in power
  • Smaller \(W\) \(\implies\) individual goods (e.g., public companies’ ownership)
  • Larger \(W\) \(\implies\) public goods (e.g., growth, infrastructure)
  • Economic performance becomes more important if \(W\) is larger
• Members of \(W\) choose whether to confirm or withdraw support
  • Low \(W/S\) \(\implies\) little chance to be in the next \(W\)
  • High \(W/S\) \(\implies\) high chance to be in the next \(W\)
  • \(W\) members are more loyal if \(W/S\) is lower

Selectorate Theory: Government Performance

• Low \(W\), low \(W/S\) \(\rightarrow\) Few elites but loyal, the dictator can extract for himself. Poor performance (Kleptocracy)

Selectorate Theory: Government Performance

• Low \(W\), high \(W/S\) \(\rightarrow\) Few elites, but not loyal, they need to receive many resources. Middling performance

Selectorate Theory: Government Performance

• High \(W\), high \(W/S\) \(\rightarrow\) Diffuse support and low loyalty require public goods. Good performance

Summing Up

What We Learned

• Like elected politicians, dictators need a support coalition
• We classified dictatorships based on the support coalition
• Violence and information are both used to cement support
• Dictators have to manage elites in their coalition and the masses
• In doing so familiar problems emerge
  • Commitment, collective action, information
  • Power-sharing institutions attenuate (but do not solve) these problems
  • This is why “pseudo-democratic” institutions (parliaments, ministries, elections) are common in dictatorships
• The extent of power-sharing can explain economic performance

Thank you!