Iron Fists
Why did Putin invade Ukraine? A theory of degenerate autocracy
Georgy Egorov & Konstantin Sonin
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many dictatorships end up with a series of disastrous decisions such as Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union or Saddam Hussein's aggression against Kuwait. Even if a certain policy choice is not ultimately fatal for the regime, such as Mao's Big Leap Forward or the Pol Pot's collectivization drive, they typically involve both a miscalculation by the leadership and an institutional environment in which better informed subordinates have no chance to prevent the decision from being implemented. We offer a dynamic model of nondemocratic politics in which repression and bad decision making are self-reinforcing. Repression reduces the immediate threat to the regime, yet raises future stakes for the dictator; with higher stakes, the dictator puts more emphasis on loyalty than competence, which in turn increases the probability of a wrong policy choice. Our theory offers an explanation of how rational dictators end up in an informational bubble even in highly institutionalized regimes.
Faith, Tech, and the Mob: A Formal Theory of Authoritarian Cost Reduction
Fasih Zulfiqar
Duke University Working Paper, January 2026
Abstract:
Why do rational authoritarian regimes, equipped with precise digital surveillance tools, choose to empower volatile religious mobs? This paper challenges a critical assumption of digital authoritarianism (DA) literature, namely that regimes invest in technology to raise the material cost of dissent. I argue that regimes are adopting a new strategy -- sacralized digital authoritarianism (SDA) -- which fuses algorithmic capacity with sacred legitimacy to fundamentally alter the utility calculus of repression. I formalize this logic using a global game model with strategic complementarities, introducing two parameters: sacralization (λ) and digital crowdsourcing (δ). The equilibrium analysis demonstrates that by framing repression as a spiritual duty and providing digital platforms for coordination, regimes can lower the "minimum necessary grievance" (θ) required for incentivizing citizens to repress, bypassing the fiscal and political costs of traditional coercion. I test these predictions using comparative evidence from Turkey, Pakistan, China, India, and Myanmar. I find that SDA regimes successfully create a self-sustaining equilibrium of violence that is more cost-efficient than DA and solves the "problem of authoritarian control" without empowering the military. The findings suggest that the future of authoritarian resilience lies not in the precision of the police state, but in the algorithmic coordination of the faithful.
Castles
Desiree Desierto & Mark Koyama
European Economic Review, April 2026
Abstract:
Castles are an iconic element of how we view medieval Europe. Many of these castles were private -- the possession of feudal barons, rather than of a central state. From the conventional perspective, the prevalence of private castles prevented the monopolization of violence and is thus a sign of state weakness. Drawing on the insights of (James 1999), we challenge this state-centric perspective. We model the role of castles in the feudal world, in which political order was not maintained by a state but, rather, a coalition of king and barons who each had their own economic and military resources. The most important resource of the baron was the castle, which rendered his holdings less legible to the king and harder to appropriate, thereby increasing his bargaining power relative to the king. This, then, served as a primary check to the king's abuses and rendered his promises more credible. Castles, then, did not weaken, but rather strengthened, the feudal king's rule.
Bread, butter, barricade: Economic grievance, military industry and mutinies
Roya Izadi & Lindsey Pruett
Conflict Management and Peace Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Military involvement in the economy is a crucial aspect of civil-military relations. However, the impacts of economic ventures on the rank-and-file have not been examined empirically. In this article, we demonstrate that military economic involvement decreases the risk of mutinies by providing private goods that promote rent-seeking behavior among lower-ranking soldiers. Through military-owned enterprises, soldiers access jobs, benefits and off-book revenues (tax breaks, subsidies, favorable contracts, etc.) that are unavailable to civilians. Further, military elites may use these resources to subsidize military budgets and ameliorate economic grievances in the lower ranks. Using novel, cross-national data on military involvement in the economy and information on about 2500 military-run firms, we show that militaries with a greater stake in the economy are less likely to experience mutinies than countries with no and lower rates of economic involvement. Similar patterns hold for risk of mass defection.
Coups: Different Mechanisms and Their Consequences for Institution Change
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Based on an extension of selectorate theory, we characterize three structural conditions that make a coup likely: winning coalition size near the size that yields minimum utility to its members (so small or intermediate-sized coalitions), low economic productivity, and a leader relatively new to office. Policy misallocation exacerbates the risk of a coup. The theory and evidence show two mechanisms that increase the risk of coup: policy under-provision and over-provision. Leaders whose policy provisions are commensurate with expectations experience fewer coups. One anticipatory response of leaders to a heightened coup risk is to change the government's institutions. High coup risks increase the likelihood of institution change whether a coup actually occurs or not. The threat of an under-provision coup tends to result in an expansion of the winning coalition size (democratization), while an elevated risk of an over-provision coup typically results in a contraction in coalition size whether a coup actually occurs or not.
The political power of civil society
Desiree Desierto & Mark Koyama
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We propose a model to understand how civil society affects political reform. A member of civil society who is a political actor can defect to the opposition and directly erode the ruler's power. An ordinary citizen, however, can only indirectly depose the ruler through popular discontent, generating governance costs which, if sufficiently large, can trigger defection to the opposition by political actors. A key factor that determines the success of reform is the degree of organization of civil society into particular groups. Wide-reaching groups whose membership spans political actors and ordinary citizens are most effective; groups composed of solely political actors are somewhat effective; while groups composed solely of ordinary citizens are the least effective. We apply this framework to explain key features of the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688. We also discuss two other examples: the People Power Revolution in the Philippines, and the Arab Spring.
Vote or Fight?
David Levine, Cesar Martinelli & Nicole Stoelinga
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why do some nations allocate power through voting while others do it through fighting? When political power is indivisible, voting is a substitute for fighting -- provided the losing side accepts the outcome. We study a theoretical model of this substitution, and use a country-level panel dataset to assess empirically whether the economic factors influencing fighting also shape voting. They do. We contribute several theoretical and empirical innovations. First, we apply a recently developed method for analysing conflict resolution functions to derive robust theoretical results. Second, we introduce a new explanatory variable -- productive efficiency as measured by income relative to the global frontier -- and we explain the theoretical and empirical relevance of this variable. Finally, we show that absolute income levels do not matter, whereas oil wealth and ethnic divisions do -- though their influence is less important than that of productive efficiency in explaining patterns of fighting and voting. A key implication of our analysis is that reducing global inequality is crucial for decreasing conflict and fostering democracy.
Pedagogy of Fear: Folklore and the Far-Right in Weimar Germany
Elena Amaya & Robert Braun
American Sociological Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article argues that folklore (orally transmitted group knowledge) shapes far-right voting by inculcating feeling rules that resonate with nativist and autocratic ideas. Drawing on recently rediscovered archives of nineteenth- and twentieth-century folklorists, we pair a dataset of local support for the far-right in all Reichstag elections in Germany's Weimar period, with unique information on the prevalence of ethnic bogeymen in local folktales. Using spatial autoregressive models, we find a robust and considerable effect of the presence of fearful folktales on radical right voting. These effects are particularly strong for localities where citizens face political and economic threats. We use an instrumental variable analysis drawing on folklore data from the 1860s to establish the long-term roots of this pattern, disentangle the effect of folktales from contemporary political influences, and establish causal order. Our findings suggest that folklore plays a key role in aligning the supply and demand for far-right movements by shaping how citizens see and feel the world around them. In addition, we illustrate that folklore archives provide a unique opportunity to unpack affective-discursive canons across space and time.
Overseas students, ideology, and the fall of dynastic China
James Kai-sing Kung & Alina Wang
Journal of Economic Growth, March 2026, Pages 1-40
Abstract:
This paper examines the catalysis of an epochal institutional change by the contributions of a foreign-educated elite, effectively ending dynastic China. We show how the Qing government's attempt to build a modern nation-state by sending the country's best talent to study in Japan inadvertently heightened the students' nationalist desire for social and political changes, culminating in the fall of the Qing dynasty. Specifically, each additional overseas student in a county led to significantly greater participation in political parties by the people of that county (41.5%), greater representation of its elite in the provincial assembly (11.4%), and a greater likelihood of that county declaring independence (11.5%) during the 1911 Revolution. To identify causality, we leverage the influence of the network of Zhang Zhidong -- the father of overseas study -- on the spatial variation of overseas students from each county. To ensure that the networks thus formed are plausibly exogenous, we exploit pre-existing connections -- specifically those that Zhang formed with local officials before their randomized (re-)appointment to a (different) county -- and the instrumented results hold. Last, we show that schools and newspapers were the primary channels through which the people were mobilized.
Wedded to the State: Elite Social Networks and Territorial Integration in Early Modern Venice
Caterina Chiopris & Yuhua Wang
Harvard Working Paper, February 2026
Abstract:
We examine how states integrate peripheral elites by overcoming credible commitment problems that weaken taxation, public debt, and security provision. We argue that elite marriage networks can serve as an "exchange of hostages," binding central and peripheral elites through kinship ties that raise the costs of ex post opportunism and render fiscal and security promises credible. We test this mechanism in early modern Venice, where the 1630 plague and the fiscal demands of the War of Crete induced a previously closed nobility to admit wealthy mainland families. Using newly digitized family-level data on marriages, offices, and public debt holdings, we show that families integrated earlier into the noble marriage network were more likely to invest in public debt than later entrants. Integration is also associated with higher provincial tax revenues, increased military spending, and a stronger central institutional presence. These findings highlight the relational foundations of state territorial integration.