Controlling the Secret Police in Socialist Central and Eastern Europe

• In Event: Authoritarian Bureaucracies, Coercion and Social Order

Abstract

Of all the implements in the dictator's toolkit, coercion and violence are the most benign. However, relatively little research has explored how authoritarian elites delegate the detection and repression of opposition to coercive institutions. In this book project, I develop a new theory of coercion and social order under autocracy. I argue that the primary determinant of coercive institution design is not regime structure or the threat of the mass opposition, but the autocrat's problem of delegation to, and control of, coercive agents. Where autocrats are able to solve this problem, they maintain elite cohesion and develop larger, more capable coercive agencies. The size of coercive agencies goes on to have significant consequences for social order. I test this theory in a most-similar-systems framework using detailed quantitative data on the secret police of socialist Central and Eastern Europe. I am able to explain the striking, puzzling variation in the size of these agencies across space and time. My findings represent a significant contribution to ongoing debates on the nature and determinants of state violence and repression under autocracy.

Author

• Henry Thomson, Arizona State University