Power Personalization and Indoctrination in Dictatorships

Abstract

Contemporary autocracies are characterized by increasing personalization of power in the hands of the leader. However, we know little about personalist leaders' strategies to manage the masses and lower the costs of staying in power. To gain traction on this question, we ask whether, in the process of amassing power, personalist leaders invest in non-coercive strategies of political control. The empirical analysis leverages novel, expert-coded data on state control of the education system, and covers 220 autocratic regimes in the period 1950-2010. Contrary to conventional wisdom that personalist leaders shut down non-coercive pathways of socio-political control, we show that the personalization of power in dictatorships drives growing investments in indoctrination through schools and the media. Findings, which answer several calls to move beyond the study of repression for understanding the politics of non-democracies, have implications for research on authoritarian politics and personalism.