The Political Economics of Non-democracy / Georgy Egorov, Konstantin Sonin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Egorov, Georgy.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Sonin, Konstantin.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w27949.

NBER working paper series no. w27949

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2020.

Summary:

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.

Notes:

Print version record

October 2020.