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Dictatorship Under Crisis: Repressions, Co-optation and Government Spending

Student: Kazantcev Kirill

Supervisor: Alexey Zakharov

Faculty: Faculty of Social Sciences

Educational Programme: Political Science (Bachelor)

Year of Graduation: 2018

This paper develops the theory of dictator's behavior under economic instability. Although the impact of economic shocks on the coup d`etat and civil conflicts is well-studied, nobody has tried to understand how dictators react to the changes in the environment under economic decline. The concept of ''dictator's dilemma'' formulated by Ronald Wintrobe lies in the foundation of the paper. The main challenge is the identifications of the causal relationship. Economic growth —— common predictor in the models of dictatorships —— has several issues of concern. First, it is endogenous to the regime characteristics and dictators' actions. Second, measurement errors may cause biased estimates. To eliminate these concerns, I implement instrumental variables approach and use weather and export shocks as a source of the exogenous variation. I find that instrumented shocks increase the level of repressions in regimes which rely on the small group of enfranchised citizens. On the contrary, more inclusive regimes do not increase pressure on the society and provide additional public goods to the citizens. Finally, economic shocks might force dictator to introduce democratic institutions opening the window of opportunity for democratization.

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