The Trajectories of Personalization: How Do Dictators Personalize Power?

• In Event: Elite Dynamics and Social and Political Control in Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract

How did dictators such as Muammar Gaddafi, Idi Amin, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, Vladimir Putin, or Rafael Trujillo accumulate so much personal power? Personalism, or the accumulation of power by the leader at the expense of the support group, is one of the most consequential processes in autocracy. However, while institutionalized power-sharing has received substantial amounts of attention in recent years, the process of personalization remains undertheorized. Indeed, our knowledge on the specific steps that dictators take to personalize power and the timing of such maneuvers is rather limited. We address this by providing a novel theory of personalization in dictatorship.

Our central claim is that personalization is a function of the ruling coalition's loyalty --the more loyal the ruling coalition, the more personalization, and vice versa. Because of this, dictators will make personalizing moves aimed at maximizing the loyalty of the ruling coalition while at the same time minimizing the threat of a coup. Somewhat counterintuitively, we argue that ruling coalition members will accept the dictator's personalization of power despite knowing that they stand to lose power vis-à-vis the dictator in the long-run. Dictators can calibrate the optimal level of personalization to ensure the ruling coalition members prefer to stay in the regime over a potentially costly defection. We introduce a game theory model to elucidate this strategic dynamic.

We propose a classic bargaining game in which the dictator makes a personalization offer at any given point during their tenure, and the members of the coalition can accept or decline the offer. We build a bargaining game over a signaling game because we consider that most personalization moves are relatively visible in the highest circles of authoritarian decision-making. The game is described in Figure 1. The game has two actors, the dictator (D) and a member of the ruling coalition (M), who play two rounds of bargaining. The game is built this way to reflect the temporal dynamics of personalization, that is, that accepting greater personalization at time_1 has important implications for time_2. Indeed, the accumulation of personal power occurs in stages, as dictators often prefer gradual and sequential power grabs. The game also reflects the endogenous nature of the relationship between loyalty and personalism. The greater the level of loyalty within the ruling coalition, the greater the level of personalism within the regime. Yet loyalty is not exogenous, as the dictator makes personalizing decisions that maximize the coalition's loyalty. Therefore, if a personalizing move is accepted, the coalition becomes more loyal to the dictator, making further personalization more likely. This is compounded by the fact that the more loyal a coalition member is, the more difficult outside alternatives become.

The results from the model mirror the empirical results. First, the model predicts that when the level of loyalty (λ) within the ruling coalition falls below a threshold (λ∗), dictators will fully personalize despite knowing that a coup attempt is forthcoming. Similarly, above λ∗, dictators slowly personalize the regime by making moves that endogenously increase the level of loyalty within the ruling coalition. Empirically, we use cross-national TSCS data between 1950 and 2010 and find that dictators are more likely to focus on gaining institutional control over purging rivals early on in their tenure, and will purge later one when they have a more loyal ruling coalition. As the model shows, purging rivals requires higher levels of loyalty within the ruling coalition due to the increased costs associated with purges. Since dictators are more likely to start their tenures with lower levels of overall loyalty, initial moves are the least costly and thus revolve around gaining control over appointments in order to install loyalists in key positions both within the military and the civilian apparatus. The only exception are dictators who are weak at the outset of their tenure: these leaders personalize much more rapidly, including purging rivals, because they know their best outcome is to try to and successfully fight off an inevitable coup.

Authors

• Abel Escriba-Folch, Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals

• Joan C. Timoneda, Purdue University

• Kyle Haynes, Purdue University