Loyalty and Acquiescence: Authoritarian Regimes and Inequality Outcomes

Abstract

This article seeks to explain inequality outcomes in authoritarian regimes as a function of the different combinations of loyalty-building and repressive measures (carrots and sticks) that authoritarian rulers use to maintain power. Like democratically-elected rulers, authoritarian rulers supply public and private goods in response to competitive pressures, and they can also employ repression to raise the costs of political dissent. The optimal combination of carrots and sticks varies across authoritarian regimes according to the nature of the political institutions by which authoritarian rule is organized. The results are economic policy outcomes that, over time, affect the level of economic inequality. Using a cross-national dataset covering over 80 authoritarian regimes observed during the 1965-2005 time period, this article develops and tests hypotheses that link inequality outcomes to authoritarian regime types.

Keywords: inequality, authoritarianism