Service Provision and Social Control

• In Event: Economic Influences on Regime Change

Abstract

Popular uprisings present a serious challenge to authoritarian rule. To counter such threats, leaders rely on a combination of `carrots'(policy concessions, economic inducements) and `sticks' (repression, disappearances, torture) to suppress opponents
and silence dissidents. The success of either strategy, however, requires information about citizens' attitudes towards the regime. We develop a model in which leaders counter revolutionary threats by manipulating levels of public goods provision and mobilizing the state's repressive apparatus. The model predicts that regimes will use strategic public goods to collect information on citizens' attitudes even when public goods are more expensive than other policies, but only when economic productivity is lower. Information collection via goods provision increases in political polarization, while regime efficiency has
competing effects. The model demonstrates that public goods can elicit credible signals of citizens' attitudes towards the regime, allowing authoritarian leaders to more effectively repress and coopt citizens. The presentation of public goods as a strategic, information-gathering mechanism contrasts with the common understanding of authoritarian provision of public goods as a populist strategy meant to gain legitimacy, or a developmentalist strategy meant to promote economic growth.

Authors

• Pearce Edwards, Emory University

• Patrick Pierson, Emory