The Political Economics of Non-democracy

Georgy Egorov and Konstantin Sonin

No 27949, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We survey recent theoretical and empirical literature on political economics of non-democracies. Dictators face many challenges to their rule: internal, such as palace coups or breakdown of their support coalition, or external, such as mass protests or revolutions. We analyze strategic decisions made by dictators — hiring political loyalists to positions that require competence, restricting media freedom at the cost of sacrificing bureaucratic efficiency, running a propaganda campaign, organizing electoral fraud, purging associates and opponents, and repressing citizens — as driven by the desire to maximize the regime's chances of staying in power. We argue that the key to understanding the functioning and ultimately the fate of a nondemocratic regime is the information flows within the regime, and the institutions that govern these information flows.

JEL-codes: C73 D72 D74 D82 D83 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
Note: POL
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published as Georgy Egorov & Konstantin Sonin, 2024. "The Political Economics of Non-democracy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 62(2), pages 594-636, June.
Published as Georgy Egorov & Konstantin Sonin, 2024. "The Political Economics of Non-democracy," Journal of Economic Literature, vol 62(2), pages 594-636.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27949.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Political Economics of Non-democracy (2024)
Working Paper: The Political Economics of Non-democracy (2020)
Working Paper: The Political Economics of Non-democracy (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27949

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27949

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().