Cults of personality, preference falsification, and the dictator’s dilemma

Abstract

<jats:p> We offer a novel rational explanation for cults of personality. Participation in a cult of personality is psychologically costly whenever it involves preference falsification, with the costs varying across individuals. We highlight two characteristics associated with lower individual costs of preference falsification: (i) loyalty to the regime and (ii) unscrupulousness. Different characteristics might serve the regime better in different roles. Using a simple formal screening model, we demonstrate that one’s participation in a cult of personality improves the dictator’s personnel decisions under a wide variety of circumstances. Decisions are most improved when subordinates’ characteristics that better enable cult participation are correspondingly valued by dictators. Dictators who can manipulate the costs that cult participants pay find it easiest to ensure that correspondence. Our model also highlights the importance to dictators of not believing their own propaganda, and their need to offer increasingly extreme acts of cult participation as old acts become normalized. </jats:p>

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“…Сразу после российского вторжения в Украину президент Путин пояснил, чего он надеется достичь, вторгшись в Украину. 73 В выступлении Путина бросается в глаза, что Украина кратко упомянута лишь раз в конце его речи; зато всё внимание сосредоточено на Западе -президент Путин прямо возлагает вину на США. Он говорит, что «НАТО -это только инструмент внешней политики США», и что «… весь так называемый западный блок, сформированный США по своему образу и подобию, весь он целиком и есть та самая 'империя лжи'».…”

The democratic king: The role of ritualized flattery in political discourse

“…Flattery in authoritarian regimes, that is, cult-of-personality rituals, have been studied in political science (e.g. Crabtree et al, 2020: 411), where they are described as ‘godlike glorification of a modern political leader’ by deploying ‘rhetorical extravagance’ and adulation rituals. Cults of personality arise when the authoritarian leader’s power over subordinates has given way to personal, unconstrained rule that reinforces the dictator’s paramount political standing.…”

“…Some current authoritarian state leaders are also associated with habitual flattery, among them, Russian President Putin (Sperling, 2016) and Turkish President Erdogan (Uysal and Schroeder, 2019). In these countries, it is perhaps easier to see the role of ritualized flattery since cults of personality are common occurrences in authoritarian regimes (Crabtree et al, 2020). In both instances, the habitual approbation rituals towards the leaders and their specific personalities are expected, since in an autocracy, the ‘god’ of the ritual is the specific leader.…”

“….] of the leader’ (Crabtree et al, 2020: 411). Uysal and Schroeder (2019) found that Twitter accounts of public diplomacy in Turkey function mainly as a ‘new’ cult-of-personality tool that presents Erdogan as the embodiment of Turkey’s good values.…”

Camouflaged propaganda: A survey experiment on political native advertising

“…While there is a large and growing literature dealing with political propaganda, it tends to focus on issues of media control and the types of hard and heavy-handed propaganda that are easily detected, such as pro-regime reporting in government-controlled news programs and government-sponsored nationalist commercials (Di Tella and Franceschelli, 2011; Stockmann, 2013; Gehlbach and Sonin, 2014; Archer and Clinton, 2018; Huang, 2015, 2018; Little, 2017). A common claim in the literature is that propaganda, perhaps because it is often so easily detected, is not designed to achieve persuasion but instead to identify loyalists or signal the coercive capacity of the state (Crabtree et al, 2018; Little, 2018; Marquez, 2018; Huang, 2018, 2015). Relatively few studies have examined the type of soft propaganda that is harder to detect and is the hallmark of political native advertising.…”