Cooption and Repression in the Soviet Union
22 Pages Posted: 14 Feb 2006
Date Written: December 2000
Abstract
The Soviet ruling elite, the nomenklatura, used both cooption and political repression to encourage loyalty to the communist regime. Loyalty was critical both in defusing internal opposition to the rule of the nomenklatura and in either deterring or defeating foreign enemies of the Soviet Union. We assume that the nomenklatura determined the extent of cooption and the intensity of political repression by equating their perceived marginal benefits and marginal costs. We use this assumption to construct an account of the historical evolution of policies of cooption and political repression in the Soviet Union.
Keywords: Cooption, Repression, Soviet Union, Communist Party, Nomenklatura
JEL Classification: D78, N44, P21
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
The Foundations of Limited Authoritarian Government: Institutions and Power-Sharing in Dictatorships
By Carles Boix and Milan Svolik
-
By Scott Gehlbach and Philip Keefer
-
Power-Sharing and Leadership Dynamics in Authoritarian Regimes
By Milan Svolik
-
Dictators and Their Viziers: Endogenizing the Loyalty-Competence Trade-Off
By Georgy Egorov and Konstantin Sonin
-
Inequality and Democratization
By Ben W. Ansell and David J. Samuels
-
Authoritarian Elections and Leadership Succession, 1975-2004
By Gary W. Cox
-
By Susan D. Hyde and Nikolay Marinov
-
Policy Uncertainty in Hybrid Regimes - Evidence from Firm Level Surveys
By Thomas Kenyon and Megumi Naoi