To Purge or Not to Purge? An Individual-Level Quantitative Analysis of Elite Purges in Dictatorships

Goldring, Edward; Matthews, Austin S.

doi:10.1017/s0007123421000569

Cited by 13 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…Some politically connected elites become more vulnerable to the dictator's financial coercion during crises, as they lose their legitimacy and public support. In that sense, my research contributes to the growing body of scholarship on micro-level determinants of elite purges (Goldring and Matthews 2023). I unpack how a regime's political economy fosters negative public perceptions of certain firms and industries and increases public support for the financial repression of these co-opted business elite.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Taming a Paper Tiger? A Political Economy of Support for the Repression of the Business Elite

Sinanoglu

2023

Preprint

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Why do autocrats financially repress some allies but not others during an economic crisis? When too many foxes are in the henhouse, an autocrat may purge his allies in bad times and shrink the winning coalition. However, it is a risky enterprise. If he targets the wrong elite, it may backfire and trigger coups and dissent. Despite the high risk, we still do not know much about precisely who autocrats are likely to sideline from the ruling coalition. I suggest that the autocrat’s business allies are a politically expedient target during economic crises because the people perceive the co-opted business elite as corrupt. Given their low public popularity, the autocrat may justifiably blame the greedy business elite for the country’s economic woes. To develop a framework for public support for repression, I focus on Turkey as a case – a highly polarized country that has experienced a protracted financial crisis. One novel contribution of this study is the use of visual conjoints. I created fake LinkedIn profiles of hypothetical businesspeople with AI-generated profile pictures and business logos. I measured people’s support for their financial repression, depending on their firm’s characteristics, sectoral affiliations, and partisan attitudes toward the government’s economic policies. The results suggest that public support for financial coercion depends on the regime’s political economy. People are more likely to condone the extra-taxation of the business elite, who owe their success to the regime and are perceived as responsible for the economic crisis. This paper contributes to a growing scholarship on micro-level determinants of autocratic purges, and its findings have broad implications for our understanding of elite defection and autocratic power-sharing arrangements.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Taming a Paper Tiger? A Political Economy of Support for the Repression of the Business Elite

Sinanoglu

2023

Preprint

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“…In addition, it can rely on both material and immaterial inducements to targets. For example, indoctrination may promise material inducements such as increased wages and better standards of living as states seek to create or increase industrialization (Gellner 2008) or militarization (Darden & Mylonas 2016). In terms of immaterial inducements, indoctrination may emphasize community acceptance as states seek to forge a national identity, create allegiance to a national project (Fouka 2019), or promote domestic order through loyalty to the state (Darden & Grzymala-Busse 2006, Cantoni et al 2017, Pop-Eleches & Tucker 2017, Alesina et al 2021, Paglayan 2021.…”

Section: Indoctrinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Control

Hassan

Mattingly

Nugent

2022

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci.

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Political leaders use different tactics to ensure widespread compliance with state policies and to minimize resistance. Scholarship tends to treat different tactics individually, suggesting fundamental dissimilarities in underpinning logic and goals. We introduce political control as a concept that unifies these different tactics within a single framework and demonstrate the analytical utility of considering seemingly disparate strategies in conversation rather than in isolation. We synthesize a growing recent literature on political control, including innovative approaches to repression as well as studies of indoctrination, distribution, and infiltration. We argue that tactics of political control can be understood to vary along two primary dimensions: the level of violence and the materiality of rewards. We highlight recent inquiry into the downstream effects of political control. We conclude with a call for more research on political control that considers combinations of different tactics, across regime types, in a world where tolerance of violent repression is diminishing. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Political Science, Volume 25 is May 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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“…The recent literature of elite purges in autocracies provides insights supporting this claim. Several studies investigate the targets of purges under dictatorship and find that competent and experienced elites are more likely to be purged by a dictator as they are perceived as greater threats (Wong and Chan, 2021;Goldring and Matthews, 2021;Bokobza et al, 2022).…”

Section: Informal Elite Competition and Media Reports Under Authorita...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Do winners spread more words? Factional competition and local media reports on corruption investigation in China

Hong

Yang

2022

PSRM

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This paper explores how factional competition shapes local media's coverage of negative political news. Employing news reports that appeared in Chinese national and local newspapers (2000–2014) coupled with data on the networks of elites, we find that local bureaucrats connected to strong national leaders tend to criticize members of weaker factions in politically damaging news reports. These adverse reports indeed harm the promotion prospects of the province leaders reported on in the articles, weakening the already weak factions and expanding the relative power of the strong factions. Our findings suggest that the loyalty-based competitive behaviors of political elites further tilt an already uneven playing field across political factions and facilitate power concentration in China.

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To Purge or Not to Purge? An Individual-Level Quantitative Analysis of Elite Purges in Dictatorships

Cited by 13 publications

References 61 publications

Taming a Paper Tiger? A Political Economy of Support for the Repression of the Business Elite

Taming a Paper Tiger? A Political Economy of Support for the Repression of the Business Elite

Political Control

Do winners spread more words? Factional competition and local media reports on corruption investigation in China

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