A Dynamic Model of Authoritarian Social Control

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Lagunoff, Roger
• 署名单位: Georgetown University
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6527
• DOI: 10.1093/restud/rdae109
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 3208-3244
• 关键词: state capacity; PROPERTY; INVESTMENT; EXPROPRIATION; performance; INEQUALITY; societies; oligarchs; dictators; survival

摘要

Authoritarian regimes often use targeted social control-unequal application of the law to limit expressive freedom and enforce social conformity. At the same time, their methods appear less draconian than in the past. In this model, an authority structures punishments and rewards to compel adherence to its preferred norm. The authority's commitment is time-limited and depends on imperfectly informative signals of a citizen's behaviour. Given two citizens with the same observed behaviour, the authority imposes harsher punishments on the poorer and/or ex ante dissident individual. Lighter punishments are imposed on the wealthier citizen to prevent over-compliance. Wealth inequality increases over time. Some citizens become prosperous lackeys while others become destitute from confiscation. In stable regimes with high state capacity, the authority reduces punishments and/or increases rewards to allow citizens to accumulate wealth, leading to social conformity and balanced growth in the long run. In unstable regimes with low capacity, the citizenry splits into groups of wealthy lackeys and destitute proles.