Published:
Cambridge, Mass: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020
Published in:NBER working paper series ; no. w27949
Extent:
1 Online-Ressource; illustrations (black and white)
Language:
English
DOI:
10.3386/w27949
Identifier:
Reproduction note:
Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
Origination:
Footnote:
System requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files
Mode of access: World Wide Web
Description:
We survey recent theoretical and empirical literature on political economics of non-democracies. Dictators face many challenges to their rule: internal, such as palace coups or breakdown of their support coalition, or external, such as mass protests or revolutions. We analyze strategic decisions made by dictators -- hiring political loyalists to positions that require competence, restricting media freedom at the cost of sacrificing bureaucratic efficiency, running a propaganda campaign, organizing electoral fraud, purging associates and opponents, and repressing citizens -- as driven by the desire to maximize the regime's chances of staying in power. We argue that the key to understanding the functioning and ultimately the fate of a nondemocratic regime is the information flows within the regime, and the institutions that govern these information flows