Political repression in autocratic regimes

Bove, V. Michael; Platteau, Jean‐Philippe; Sekeris, Petros G.

doi:10.1016/j.jce.2016.11.004

Cited by 23 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…This suggests that the results are mostly coming from the variation across countries rather than within, which is not inconsistent with our theory. 15 Next, using a new dataset of Cederman et al (2009), in Table 3 we re-estimate our benchmark specification looking specifically at the incidence of conflicts regarded as ethnic. There, we use the most demanding empirical specifications with continent and year fixed effects, for both the oil reserves resource proxy (columns 1 and 2) and the oil and diamonds productions proxy (columns 3 and 4).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To sign (15) notice that the first term of the bracketed expression is positive, and it captures the direct effect of the ruler's military strength on conflict effort: when resources are better protected, the pie at stake from the ethnic groups' perspective is smaller, thus inducing them to devote less effort to fighting at equilibrium.…”

Section: Military Strengthmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In resource-rich polities more groups attempt violently appropriating the natural wealth, eventually reducing the aggregate cooptation cost to maintain peace (Bjorvatn and Naghavi 2011). Alternatively, in such contexts rulers may increasingly seek the support of counter-elites while stepping up repression of the population at large, again resulting in lower levels of conflict (Bove et al 2017). With respect to this literature we propose an additional channel linking natural resources to conflict, namely that in resource-rich societies, an autocratic ruler may find an internal conflict an acceptable cost to bear in terms of foregone tax base, in order to maximize the tax rate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Beyond divide and rule: Weak dictators, natural resources and civil conflict

Luca

Sekeris

Vargas

2018

European Journal of Political Economy

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We propose a model where weak rulers have incentives to let ethnically divided countries plunge in civil war. Allowing inter-group fighting reduces production-and hence the tax base-but enables the ruler to devote more resources to increasing the tax rate. This mechanism is increasingly salient with larger amounts of natural resources, especially if these are unequally distributed across ethnic groups. We validate the theoretical predictions using crosscountry data, and show that our empirical results are robust to controlling for the usual determinants of civil war incidence, and to using various proxies for the ruler's relative weakness and for the presence of natural resources.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Military Strengthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Beyond divide and rule: Weak dictators, natural resources and civil conflict

Luca

Sekeris

Vargas

2018

European Journal of Political Economy

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“…The study of state repression in autocracies has received considerable attention in comparative politics and international relations over the last decade (see, e.g., Davenport 2007a;Vreeland 2008;Powell and Staton 2009;Conrad 2014;Frantz and Kendall-Taylor 2014;Hill 2015;Bove, Platteau, and Sekeris 2015). Prominent explanations emphasize differences between types of nondemocratic regimes to explain why some states are more repressive than others (Davenport 2007a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Authoritarian Institutions and State Repression

Rivera

2016

Journal of Conflict Resolution

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Existing research has paid increasing attention to the role of political institutions such as legislatures and opposition parties in autocracies. So far, however, the relationship between nondemocratic institutions and state repression has remained largely unclear. This article argues that authoritarian institutions are related to divergent conflicting dynamics between incumbent regimes and opposition actors, which provide leaders with opposite incentives to repress. While authoritarian legislatures enhance leaders' capacity to prevent conflict and reduce their need for repression, the presence of opposition parties helps opposition actors to overcome collective action barriers and mobilize against the incumbent regime, increasing the states' need for repression. A panel data analysis of nondemocracies from 1976 to 2007 shows that authoritarian-elected legislatures reduce repression and the presence of opposition parties increases it. Moreover, the results indicate that autocracies with opposition parties and an elected legislature experience lower repression than autocracies with opposition parties but no elected legislature.

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“…Despite not being subject to the kind of political accountability that arises from free, fair, and competitive elections, autocratic leaders face the risk of being unseated through irregular, often violent, means (Gandhi and Przeworski 2007;Gehlbach, Sonin, and Svolik 2016). Specifically, domestic threats emerge either from elites plotting to launch a coup (e.g., Aidt and Leon 2019;Leon 2014;Little 2017), or opposition movements aiming to overthrow the regime through revolution (e.g., Finkel and Gehlbach 2018;Little 2016;Shadmehr 2014;Shadmehr and Boleskavsky Forthcoming), and sometimes both (Bove, Platteau, and Sekeris 2017;Dorsch and Maarek 2018;Tyson 2018). Nearly two-thirds of autocratic leaders leave power via coup d'état, while an additional 10:6% fall in popular uprisings (Svolik 2009).…”

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confidence: 99%

Autocratic Stability in the Shadow of Foreign Threats

2020

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Autocrats confront a number of threats to their power, some from within the regime and others from foreign actors. To understand how these threats interact and affect autocratic survival, we build a model where an autocratic leader can be ousted by a domestic opposition and a foreign actor. We concentrate on the impact that foreign threats have on the stability of autocratic leadership and show that the presence of foreign threats increases the probability an autocrat retains power. Focusing on two cases, one where a foreign actor and the domestic opposition have aligned interests and one where their interests are misaligned, we elucidate two distinct mechanisms. First, when interests are aligned, autocrats are compelled to increase domestic security to alleviate international pressure. Second, when interests are misaligned, autocrats exploit the downstream threat of foreign intervention to deter domestic threats. We also show that autocrats have incentives to cultivate ideological views hostile to broader interests among politically influential domestic actors.

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Political repression in autocratic regimes

Cited by 23 publications

References 58 publications

Beyond divide and rule: Weak dictators, natural resources and civil conflict

Beyond divide and rule: Weak dictators, natural resources and civil conflict

Authoritarian Institutions and State Repression

Autocratic Stability in the Shadow of Foreign Threats

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