The Political Economics of Non-Democracy
57 Pages Posted: 3 Nov 2020
There are 3 versions of this paper
The Political Economics of Non-democracy
The Political Economics of Non-Democracy
Date Written: October 2020
Abstract
We survey recent theoretical and empirical literature on political economy 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.
Keywords: bureaucracy, Censorship, coup d'etat, Dictatorship, electoral fraud, media freedom, nondemocratic politics, Propaganda, repressions, Revolutions
JEL Classification: C73, D72, D74, D82, D83, P16
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