The Logic of Political Survival Revisited: Consequences of Elite Uncertainty Under Authoritarian Rule

TL;DR

This paper extends a formal model of autocratic survival to analyze how uncertainty within the ruling elite influences concessions, revealing conditions that affect authoritarian stability and policy volatility.

Contribution

It introduces a novel extension of the existing model to incorporate elite uncertainty, providing new insights into authoritarian concessions and stability.

Findings

Increased elite uncertainty can lead to more concessions by autocrats.

Elite uncertainty influences the likelihood of purges and destabilization.

The model identifies conditions affecting policy volatility in autocracies.

Abstract

Existing research has established that autocrats offer concessions to prevent ouster by their inner circle. This paper examines how those concessions are influenced by the relative uncertainty of an autocrat's inner circle about remaining in that favored body. I take as my starting point the formal model of political survival presented in Bueno de Mesquita et al.'s The Logic of Political Survival. I extend the model to account for variation in the relative uncertainty of an autocrat's inner circle. To make the math tractable, I dispense with convention and introduce comparative statics across two models with different formulations of uncertainty. This exercise reveals a set of conditions under which to expect an increase in the concessions offered by an autocrat, with implications for development and democracy. Those findings yield a corresponding set of logical corollaries with potential to further our understanding of authoritarian politics, including an unexamined facet of the "dictator's dilemma" (Wintrobe 1990, 1998) and related incentives for members of an inner circle to permit purges or act to destabilize their ranks. The models also identify a source of policy volatility not found outside of autocracies. Taken together, the findings suggest a need for more research on elite uncertainty in autocracies.