What kind of dictatorship

Do they really boil down to one type, especially given the limitations of the data and the difficulties of distinguishing them empirically? Is this appropriate? How useful are the classifications for understanding the workings of a regime? The meaning of the first two questions is clear enough.

In the contemporary context, one is tempted to suggest, as is often done in the literature, that the length or stability of a regime is an indicator of how much support it has and therefore is a measure of its goodness. However, how long a regime lasts is also a result of how successful it is at repressing opposition. We address this issue in section In turning to the forth question, I see classifications as often a very useful tool for understanding dictatorships. The point of a classification is to move beyond the idea that all dictatorships are alike in their behavior, so it is effective if it correctly isolates the different behaviors of regimes.

Of course, even a good classification system p. In section The outline of the chapter is as follows: section Section Tinpots and Totalitarians.

Her arguments are complex and difficult to summarize briefly, but the following themes are essential. First, totalitarianism, as exemplified by Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, was a new kind of dictatorship, different from traditional kinds of authoritarianism. Second, despite the vast differences between these two regimes, she regarded them as fundamentally the same, in a certain sense: both behaved as power-maximizing juggernauts, attempting to maximize the power of the state over the individuals in it.

In this specific sense, the two regimes can be classified under the same label: totalitarian. The argument was used by many Nazi defendants but not accepted by the judges at the Nuremberg trials and by Eichmann at his trial in Jerusalem to suggest that they could not be found guilty of their crimes.

Instead, people joined the regime via the interest groups of which they were members. Thus, doctors joined the party as a group, and the same appeared to be true of other interest groups. This fits in with a rational-choice analysis of the role of individuals in politics: the free-rider problem limits individual participation while groups facilitate it.

Nor did the bureaucrats under the regime behave simply as robotic servants of the master. This picture of bureaucracy in totalitarian states, with the accompanying idea that everyone just obeys orders, has been questioned by Breton and Wintrobe The Nazi bureaucracy in general was competitive, with bureaucrats in different bureaus competing to implement their own versions of the Final Solution.

New historical evidence by Stangneth corroborates this picture of Eichmann in particular. And for that reason, it is easy to find him guilty.

I will return to this point about competition among subnational units of government in the discussion of the Chinese economic system. For now, it is worth emphasizing that this picture of the Nazi regime as a competitive bureaucracy does not mean the concept of the banality of evil should be discarded. That evil is done as the result of competition does not make it any less banal or ordinary. And, in this age of groups like ISIS, the concept would appear more relevant than ever.

Despite the gruesomeness of the acts done by ISIS, which recall the Nazi regime in their barbarity, the people committing them appear utterly ordinary. There are, of course, many other works on totalitarianism by historians and political scientists—for example, Friedrich and Brzezinski and Kirkpatrick But the basic dichotomy is the contrast between this type of regime and other, milder forms of dictatorship authoritarians or tinpots. An economic or rational-choice model that tried to capture the distinction between the two regime types was developed in Wintrobe , A totalitarian regime can be modeled as one that maximizes power over its citizens.

The question, then, is what is the constraint? In turn, this breeds fear on the part of the dictator, since not knowing what the population really thinks gives him reason to fear them. The paradox is that the more the dictator uses his repressive apparatus to stifle opposition, dissent, and criticism, the more reason he has be afraid, because the more opposition is stifled, the less he knows how much support he really has.

Dictators who wish to remain in office for a long time, therefore, do not usually rule by repression alone. Instead, they find ways to build their long-term support or loyalty. It follows from this that dictators do not survive through repression alone but use two instruments to stay in power between power and consumption: repression and loyalty.

The dictator also faces a trade-off between power and consumption: the more he consumes, the fewer resources are available for producing power. What else constrains the dictator? He can always get more resources by using his power to raise taxes, applying simple confiscation, borrowing, or other means. And if he can always get more resources, he can use those resources to increase repression or attract more loyalty, and thus build more power. So, is his power unlimited?

Not necessarily. What this reasoning neglects is the likelihood of diminishing returns. In the case of loyalty, initially it is easy to build with those who are predisposed to support the regime.

But then it gets harder, and it obviously gets particularly hard to obtain loyalty from those who are fundamentally opposed to the regime. Similarly, a little bit of repression can be imposed at relatively small cost by using the police and the army to put down dissent.

But at higher levels, these resources get exhausted and people who are unsuited for this purpose postal workers? Finally, it is relatively easy to convert power into resources by imposing small taxes, but as these taxes get steeper or broader, resistance can be expected to mount. As long as there are diminishing returns to the accumulation of power by spending resources converting money into power, and diminishing returns to using power to get more resources power into money , then ultimately there is a limit to both power and the resources available to the dictator.

So, dictators, even ones like Hitler, Stalin, or Kim Il Sung, never obtain absolute power over their subjects. Instead, there is a finite quantity, an equilibrium of power and resources available to the dictator, that can be shown to vary in predictable ways.

One can solve this model and obtain equilibrium levels of repression and loyalty, as well as equilibrium levels for power and regime budget. This leads to the second implication of this way of thinking: a fourfold classification of dictators, instead of the twofold tinpot vs. A totalitarian dictatorship is implied when equilibrium repression and loyalty are both high, and a tinpot when they are both low. Then, there are two intermediate cases: tyranny high repression, low loyalty , and a possibly mythical case of timocracy low repression and high loyalty.

Thus, unlike most political science classifications e. And the point is not just to classify dictatorships but, instead, to derive predictions about their behavior.

It turns out that the different types behave differently. One simple implication is their expected longevity: totalitarians should last the longest, followed by tyrannies, and then tinpots. Another, more subtle implication is that they respond differently to shocks. A totalitarian regime maximizes power over its citizens. A tinpot, on the other hand, is interested mainly in consumption, so he tries to obtain just enough power to stay in office and uses any surplus for his own consumption living in the palace, driving the Mercedes, sporting a Rolex watch.

For example, in response to an improvement in economic performance or a victory in war that raises the loyalty of the citizens to the regime, the tinpot will decrease repression and use the resources saved to consume more.

A totalitarian, on the other hand, maximizes power. Either of these developments gives him an opportunity to increase his power. Because he maximizes power, he takes this opportunity. Alternatively, looking at one example of the reverse situation an unfavorable development , we see that the decline in economic performance in the s to s in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe caused a relaxation in repression, as would be predicted by this model.

One particularly interesting prediction of the model concerns military regimes Wintrobe —; , 56— Political scientists have long thought that they represent a special kind of regime and they are formally part of the classification systems of Geddes and Cheibub et al.

The evidence indicates that they are the least stable form of dictatorship. Now, this is a paradox. If any kind of dictatorship should be good at repression, it is the military kind. Why are they so short and unstable? Why do they typically end by voluntarily handing power over to civilian regimes? To understand this phenomenon, we ask what can be expected to happen when a military regime replaces a civilian dictatorship.

A military regime should have a comparative advantage at repression: it can increase it at lower cost than a civilian one. But the military is a closed hierarchy, with its own codes of behavior, networks, and ways of doing things. This in turn has two consequences: 1 career opportunities for military personnel outside the army, navy, and the like tend to be limited. It follows that the price of repression tends to be lower, and the price of civilian loyalty higher for the military, and military dictatorships typically do govern using more repression and receiving less loyalty than civilian regimes.

But as budget maximizers, after they obtain power, their main objective is to raise the military budget and the salaries of military personnel. Moreover, raising some military salaries and not others engenders jealousy and competition within the military and therefore further pressure for wage increases from those who have not been favored. It follows that once the military have been in power and have raised military salaries and the military budget, the price of repression rises , and the military regime loses its comparative advantage over a civilian regime.

Thus, military rule has a peculiar feature: in the process of governing, it acts to destroy its own comparative advantage at governing. Put another way, it tends to sow the seeds of its own destruction! Initially, repression is relatively cheap under this rule, but in the process of rewarding supporters by raising the wages of the military, it systematically destroys its advantage. This explains the paradox: that military regimes tend to be unstable. The history of military coups in Latin America, and even in South Korea, is testament to this proposition: countercoups are twice as likely in military regimes as in others.

And the typical response of a military regime to these difficulties is for the military to exit after a few years in power and turn the power over to civilians, having obtained guarantees against prosecution and being assured of protection for their military budget. And this explains why military regimes on average tend to be short, 11 years on average as estimated in one study Hadenius and Torrell At the same time, this raises a puzzle: some military regimes are not unstable.

For example, the regime of North Korea has survived for over 60 years. This paradox of North Korea is addressed in section Some of the implications of this general model have been tested by Islam and Winer They used a large sample of both nondemocratic and democratic countries. Countries were classified into different regime types tinpots, tyrannies, and totalitarians using the combined values of the Gastil indices of political freedom and civil liberties.

Hypotheses concerning the relationship between economic growth and the combined value of the Gastil indices were then tested for the period to The results indicate that the relationship between an index of civil and political freedoms and economic growth varies significantly across the three regime types. Verwimp suggests that the Habyarimana regime, frustrated by its loss of power, attempted to split the population along ethnic p. Thus, the genocide is interpreted as the attempt by the regime to remain in power by accentuating the ethnic split, ultimately singling out one group for extermination by the other.

Another extension was made to theocracy, specifically the Papal States Padovano and Wintrobe Popes during the whole history of the temporal power of the papacy are classified into tinpot, totalitarian, and tyrant types.

Two hypotheses are tested. The first is that tinpot popes are weaker and therefore should have shorter-lived regimes compared to tyrannical and totalitarian popes. The second is that totalitarian popes pose a more serious threat to, and are thus more likely to be opposed by, other political powers, like the empires of the Middle Age and the nation-states in more recent times. As the election of an anti-pope is probably the most serious challenge to the legitimacy of a pope, the model predicts that the probability of having an anti-pope is higher during totalitarian papacies than during tinpot or tyrannical ones.

The evidence generally supports both hypotheses. Juan Linz made many contributions to political science, but one of those that he is best known for is his considerable expansion of the classification of authoritarian regimes Linz Perhaps the central goal for his classification system was to describe the locus of power as accurately as possible.

Modern work in this tradition of classification that focusses on who rules— that is, on where the control over access to power and influence lies—begins with Geddes , who replaced the traditional distinction between totalitarian and authoritarian or tinpot with three categories of ruler: personalist, military, and single-party. Her purpose was to explain the differences in democratization experienced in different regions in the period to Using a new data set that includes authoritarian regimes, her evidence shows that survival rates for different types of regime differ markedly.

Cheibub et al. Their reasoning seems to be that the way governments are removed from power drives the difference between different types of democracy, and they reason that the same thing should hold true for different types of dictatorship. Previous studies had found unambiguous results for these topics. But using these new definitions and adjusting the cut point for democracy in the polity data, Cheibub et al.

Thus, with one cut point, democracies are more likely to suffer from civil war than do dictatorships, while with a different one, democracies are less likely to suffer from civil war than do dictatorships Similar ambiguities prevail with respect to whether democracy promotes economic growth and whether economic growth promotes democratization.

Minor adjustments in coding and the definition of democracy and dictatorship produce different results. Gandhi explores the effects of different kinds of institutions under dictatorship. She then creates a measure of political institutionalization that is highest for a legislature with multiple parties, medium for a legislature in which the regime party occupies all seats, and low for all other situations.

She looks at the number of years each country has been under dictatorship during the period to She finds that institutionalization tends to be highest under civilian dictators and lowest under monarchs. But her main result is that dictatorships with more institutionalization defined in this way tend to be more stable, have more economic growth, and are more tolerant of civil liberties. Long Time Horizon. In the model, public goods enter as a factor input that increases the output of private goods.

There have been some tests of the implications of this model. Deacon compares levels of public-goods provision under dictatorship versus democracy.

He provides evidence that dictatorial governments provide public schooling, roads, safe water, public sanitation, and pollution control at levels far below those of democracies.

But he does not classify the dictatorships in his sample into those with long or short time horizons. Wright does do this and also asks whether short or long time horizons lead to more economic growth. He tests a version of the model in the context of the advisability of a country or the UN giving aid to dictators.

He points out that from to , two-thirds of all aid-recipient countries were authoritarian regimes. Even in , 53 of aid-recipient countries were authoritarian regimes. His basic hypothesis is that giving aid to dictators with long time horizons should be positively associated with economic growth, whereas aid to dictators with short time horizons high probability of failure should be associated with zero or negative growth.

Wright argues that the time horizon a dictator faces affects his incentives to use the aid in three ways. First, following Olson, he suggests that dictators have a greater incentive to invest in public goods when they have a long time horizon. Second, dictators with a short time horizon often face a threat from challengers to their regimes; this in turn leads them to forgo investment and instead consume state resources in two forms that are harmful to growth: repression and private payoffs to political opponents.

Third, dictators with a short time horizon have a strong incentive to secure personal wealth as a form of insurance against future regime collapse. He argues that the predicted probability of authoritarian regime failure serves as the best proxy for measuring time horizons, instead of the age of the regime or the number of coups.

When the probability of regime failure is zero a very stable regime , the impact of aid on growth is positive. In general, foreign aid is associated with positive p. He concludes that there is a case for giving aid to dictators with long time horizons:. The real abusers of aid, it appears, are dictators with short time horizons.

This suggests that there is considerable variation within authoritarian regimes over how they use aid, which means that simply giving aid to democracies may miss a valuable opportunity to spur growth in some types of authoritarian regimes. Wright , For democratic countries wondering how to deal with dictatorships, it seems that here, the objective of economic growth has completely replaced considerations for reducing repression or fostering political freedom.

I address this issue in the next section. It might seem that, in the end, the different systems of classification may all be boiled down to one. It is easy to see this point theoretically: how much power is positively related to who has the power and how long he can be expected to exercise it.

And given the crudeness of the data, with its inherent difficulty of distinguishing the different types of regimes empirically, boiling the systems down to one simple distinction might be more sensible than endless tinkering with and refinement of the different systems.

Empirical tests do generally show that tinpots tend to be less stable than totalitarians e. However, the fact that they are related does not mean they are the same. And this leaves some classifications as outliers—those that do not fit any picture. Wintrobe forthcoming shows that these regimes can be incorporated into his general theory of dictatorship. Monarchies might appear to be another special case because of their institutionalized resolution of the succession problem.

Indeed, an entirely different branch p. Thus, the more power the monarch has, the harder it is for him to get a loan, because having more power makes it less likely he can be forced to repay; see North and Weingast However, monarchies do not always solve the succession problem.

But the heir to the throne always possesses a certain legitimacy and security that autocrats under other regimes might long for. Economists have long favored a certain kind of dictatorship. Some examples might be Lee Kwan Yew in Singapore and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, both of whom created economically dynamic dictatorships. Like other scientists, economists often long for their ideas to be put into practice.

On the first classification tinpots vs. The reasoning here is simply that the level of political repression is larger in totalitarian regimes. Whether this leads to good or bad economic policy is ignored, since the welfare criterion used here is the level of political freedom. Some other classification systems identify dictatorships that will implement good economic policies, whether repressive or not.

In the Olsonian way of thinking, there is a clear normative distinction between dictators with short time horizons and those with long ones. The notion is that aid should be given to dictators with long time horizons because they promote economic growth. But this neglects the fact that some of these regimes have been among the most oppressive in human history.

And it was precisely because p. Another way of looking at this is to examine the implicit assumption that stable or long-lasting regimes are those with the support of the people. Consider the regimes in North Korea, China, and Russia.

Multiple political parties may exist, but one dominates the government, makes all the rules, is free to disseminate propaganda, and controls every aspect of every election which may offer voters only a single candidate , thereby ensuring they win every time. After authoritarian monarchies, these tend to be the longest-lasting dictatorships, as they can more easily install a new dictator if the existing one leaves office rare or dies.

Hybrid dictatorships blend elements of the other four types. Dictatorships suffer from an obvious and significant imbalance of power. One person holds all of the country's power. Therefore, the entire country operates on the whims of that one person. A dictator may have a team of officials who advise him or her and help keep the government running, but these officials ultimately have very little control or influence. On a similar note, a dictatorship's regular citizens have no voice in most matters.

The dictator is the absolute ruler. From the outside looking in, life within a dictatorship appears akin to being in a toxic relationship or living situation. However, many people in long-running dictatorships such as North Korea and Cameroon have never experienced anything else, so living in a dictatorship is much less jarring and shocking to them. Dictatorships seem much more extreme and unethical to people who enjoy the privilege of an outside perspective.

As of , there are 52 nations with a dictator or authoritarian regime ruling the country: Three in Latin America and South America , 27 in Asia and the Middle East, and 22 in Africa. Africa has several long-standing dictators despite the fact that the continent as a whole is quite volatile politically.

In the last six years alone, at least 26 African countries have experienced transfers of power. Unfortunately, democracy is still shaky in many countries, a number of which are fighting violent religious insurrections, and the likelihood of any fallen dictator being quickly replaced by another dictator is high. There are currently 22 dictators in Africa, some worse than others. This is thanks to an oil boom that enriched his family at the expense of the Equatorial Guinea citizens.

Obiang's regime is known for state-sanctioned kidnappings, torture of prisoners, and unlawful killings. A political rival accused Obiang of cannibalism in , but no evidence to support the claim has ever surfaced. The leaders of dictatorships are not outwardly identified as dictators when other people are addressing them. In fact, most dictators adopt common appellations such as "President" or "Prime Minister", so they must be identified via their actions and policies rather than their title.

Given the degree of censorship and control China's government leverages over its citizens, most political experts would call it a dictatorship. China's constitution calls its government a "people's democratic dictatorship. The premise of the "people's democratic dictatorship" is that the Chinese Party of China and the state represent and act on behalf of the people, but possess and may use powers against reactionary forces.

Communism is a centralized form of government led by a single party that is often authoritarian in its rule. Inspired by German philosopher Karl Marx, communist states replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of economic production, such as labor, capital goods, and natural resources. Citizens are part of a classless society that distributes goods and services as needed. The Soviet Union was a one-party, communist state in Northern Eurasia from to Most modern communist states embrace Marxism-Leninism, a communist ideology based on Marx and Russian revolutionary and politician Vladimir Lenin's doctrines.

Socialism is a system that encourages cooperation rather than competition among citizens. Citizens communally own the means of production and distribution of goods and services, while a centralized government manages it. Each person benefits from and contributes to the system according to their needs and ability.

They all adhere to socialist policies that combine free-market capitalism with extensive public works, including free healthcare, free education, a comprehensive welfare state, and high percentages of unionized workers. This approach essentially combines the collective nature of communism with the private ownership and competitiveness of capitalism. Oligarchies are governments in which a collection of individuals rules over a nation.

A specific set of qualities, such as wealth, heredity, and race, are used to give a small group of people power. Oligarchies often have authoritative rulers and an absence of democratic practices or individual rights. The government that ruled South Africa from to was a racially constructed oligarchy. The minority white population exercised dominance and imposed segregation over the nation's majority Black population, controlling policy, public administration, and law enforcement.

Following an anti-apartheid movement, the country adopted a liberal democracy that ultimately gave all ethnic and linguistic groups in South Africa political representation. Aristocracy refers to a government form in which a small, elite ruling class — the aristocrats — have power over those in lower socioeconomic strata. Members of the aristocracy are usually chosen based on their education, upbringing, and genetic or family history.

Aristocracies often connect wealth and ethnicity with both the ability and right to rule. Aristocracy originated in ancient Greece; the term derives from the Greek word, aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best. Aristocrats led major countries, including Britain, Germany, and Russia, until World War I, when other government forms gained popularity.

Monarchy is a power system that appoints a person as head of state for life or until abdication. Authority traditionally passes down through a succession line related to one's bloodline and birth order within the ruling royal family, often limited by gender.

There are two types of monarchies: constitutional and absolute. Constitutional monarchies limit the monarch's power as outlined in a constitution, while absolute monarchies give a monarch unlimited power. Today, 45 nations have some form of monarchy, though the concept has become increasingly diluted with the evolution of democratic principles.

But monarchs in other countries, including Morocco, Oman, and Saudia Arabia, still have far-reaching political authority.