Authoritarian Elites

47 Pages Posted: 17 Sep 2018 Last revised: 19 Sep 2024

See all articles by Adlai Newson

Adlai Newson

University of British Columbia (UBC) - Vancouver School of Economics

Francesco Trebbi

University of California, Berkeley - Haas School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

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Date Written: August 2018

Abstract

We explore the role of ruling elites in autocratic regimes and provide an assessment of tools useful to clarify the structure of opaque political environments. We first showcase the importance of analyzing autocratic regimes as non-unitary actors by discussing extant work on nondemocracies in Sub-Saharan Africa and China, where the prevailing view of winner-take-all contests can be clearly rejected. We show how specific biographical information about powerful cadres helps shed light upon the composition of the inner circles that empower autocrats. We further provide an application of these methods to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), one of the most personalistic, opaque, and data-poor political regimes in the world today. Employing information from DPRK state media on participants at official state events, we are able to trace the evolution and consolidation of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un around the transition period following the death of his father, Kim Jong Il. The internal factional divisions of the DPRK are explored during and after this transition. Final general considerations for the future study of the political economy of development are presented.

Suggested Citation

Newson, Adlai and Trebbi, Francesco, Authoritarian Elites (August 2018). NBER Working Paper No. w24966, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3244249

Adlai Newson (Contact Author)

University of British Columbia (UBC) - Vancouver School of Economics ( email )

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Francesco Trebbi

University of California, Berkeley - Haas School of Business ( email )

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National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ( email )

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