Popular Purges: A Survey Experiment on Scapegoating in Egypt and Russia

• In Event: Strategies of Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract

What are the effects of elite purges on popular support for a dictator? Dictators frequently purge elites to alleviate threats to their rule from coups d’état. However, dictators often deploy an alternative rarely-studied type of elite purge, which aims to help dictators survive by mitigating threats from the people and foreign states. Specifically, dictators can scapegoat elites to engage in blame avoidance for grievances that underpin popular or foreign threats. I investigate the effects of a dictator purging an elite to scapegoat them in an online survey experiment in Egypt and Russia. Conducting the survey in these diverse autocratic contexts permits greater exploration of the scope conditions of the effects of scapegoating. Results from a pilot survey suggest that scapegoating can work by helping dictators improve popular support for their rule. Funding has been secured to field the survey to at least 1,500 respondents in each of Egypt and Russia in March 2022. Beyond the average treatment effects, the survey will also assess heterogeneous treatment effects based on respondents’ education and partisan identity, while causal mediation analysis will probe the mechanisms that underpin scapegoating. Findings from the experiment will improve our knowledge of the effects of purges, and also improve our understanding of the foundations of popular support for autocratic rule.

Author

• Edward Goldring, York University