What the ‘Great Terror’ Taught Autocrats

The instruments of lesser terror are still routinely employed today. Vladimir Putin uses them to stay in power despite a weak economy, rising poverty and rampant corruption. The Kremlin allots state assets, government credits and university deanships to those in favor. Streaks of independence or defiance are punished by charges of corruption, confiscatory taxes and denial of business licenses. Political opponents are disqualified from the ballot, and ordinary protesters are sent to prison or put under house arrest. Anti-riot forces are given free rein to fire on demonstrators. Dissidents who become a real danger can be shot or poisoned. The murderer will never be found, despite an elaborate investigation and court proceeding.

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Ten Reasons Why Putin Wins Big In Syria While The U.S. Gets Nothing

Putin’s payoff from his Syrian “peace keeping” could be enormous; namely, a breakup of NATO and the European Union and a sell out by the West of Ukraine on the grounds that it is not fulfilling the conditions of the Minsk 2 agreement (as if Russia is). If this happens, Putin has achieved his main goal–the end of Ukraine as a unitary state to demonstrate the risks of attempting to break free from Russia’s “sphere of influence.” The ultimate disgrace is that the West welcomed Putin as a partner in Syria on the basis of his promise to fight ISIS. Instead, Putin bombed the opponents of Assad, inflicting massive civilian casualties on them and contributing to the migration flow into Europe. ISIS did not seem to appear on his target list. For those who know Putin, this was no surprise.

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It Would Be Hard for Assad to Lose

It is not easy to overthrow a dictator, especially one who is willing to do anything and everything to stay in power. Even in the internet age, the creation of a shadowy National Initiative for Change in Syria, will have little effect. If the regime is willing to shoot demonstrators, the price of demonstrations will eventually prove to be too high, and the demonstrations will stop.

Here are the ingredients for the overthrow of a totalitarian regime:

1. The regime is morally constrained and will not employ extreme force.
2. There is a well organized group of dedicated revolutionaries who are prepared to use all means necessary to gain power.
3. There is strong support from outside either in the form of overt or covert military and propaganda aid.

Two examples of success would be the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

In the Russian case, Nicolas II, was morally constrained to the extreme (He was devastated to learn that his people did not love him and abdicated). The Bolsheviks and their Social Revolutionary and Menshevik allies had been professional underground conspirators for a decade or more, and, among them, the Bolsheviks were prepared to use any means necessary, and the German military was prepared to lend a hand.

In the Iranian case, the Shah was constrained by his own conscience and by U.S. pressure. In the end, he was not willing to use the force necessary. His Islamic-fundamentalist opponents were well organized and had coalesced around a leader in exile. The world community considered the Shah a pariah. No country was willing to help him. After a show of resistance, the Shah resigned and left Iran for an uneasy exile.

None of these conditions for successful overthrow apply to Syria’s Assad regime. We have ample evidence that it is prepared to do anything and everything to stay in power and cares little about what the Western world thinks. After decades of dictatorial control, there is no organized opposition left, and the opposition that exists does not know how to use extreme force even if they could. There is little outside pressure. As a UN member in good standing among its peers, attempts by Western powers to gain a condemnation of Syria have failed and will continue to fail.

Even the New York Times (Embattled Arab Leaders Decide It’s Better to Fight Than Quit, April 28) has discovered that that those dictators who are prepared to use extreme force are the ones who survive. Those who followed the NYT’s advice to engage in meaningful reform are gone or will shortly be gone.

Kaddafi and His Ilk Are Not Crazy: Are Dictators Predictable?

As Kaddafi machine guns demonstrators, we are told these are acts of an insane man. We must be careful what we say or do because the criminally insane are erratic and unpredictable. Using such logic, the U.S. was among the last to call for his ouster. Examples of insanity are his public rants, the ordering of the bombing of Pan Am 103 (for which he thought he would never be caught), the ludicrous philosophizing in his Green book, the pitching of his tent in New Jersey, and his refusal to ride elevators. Other dictators are pictured in the same way: Iran’s ruling mullahs are religious fanatics; Stalin was a psychotic paranoid.

Insanity is the easiest explanation of dictatorial atrocities for Western minds to fathom. That “criminally insane” dictators follow a common pattern, transcending time and place, argues however that they share a common goal and use the same instruments and practices to achieve it. Just as we can explain business behavior through the profit motive, so can we understand and even predict dictatorial behavior by analyzing how they generate and use political power. If their actions consistently promote the paramount goal of power, their actions are completely “rational,” no matter how morally repugnant or obscene. Rational behavior can be analyzed; insane behavior cannot.

None of these dictators was offered power on a silver platter. They “had to earn it” as a famous brokerage house commercial used to say. Kaddafi gained power as a young military officer by skillfully outmaneuvering rivals and manipulating one tribe against another. Iran’s ruling mullahs won a fierce and bloody power struggle in which a large number of the ruling elite were assassinated. Stalin was the victor in one of the bloodiest succession struggles in history against better know and seemingly superior rivals. Kaddafi, Iran’s ruling mullahs, and Stalin won because they were better at accumulating and using power than their rivals. These were not accidental victories. They held on to power by skillfully playing one rival against the other and using ideology, propaganda, patronage, and religion to their advantage.

There is a growing theoretical literature that provides systematic insights into the behavior of dictators. It assumes, quite unobjectionably, that dictators aim to accumulate sufficient political power to hold on to power. They “produce” power by combining loyalty and repression (the carrot and the stick). They keep the secret police or army in check by appointing relatives or incriminated associates as its head and by removing intermediate links between operatives and the dictator. Some results are non-intuitive, such as the greater stability of dictatorships (due to the incumbent’s immense advantages) and the fact that a rational dictator will kill innocent people (a practice often used as proof of insanity).

Democratic rulers must offer platforms that please the median voter, thus the scramble to the middle in elections. Dictators can offer their platform and then “eliminate” (by jail, execution, disenfranchisement, or exile) those who disagree with it.

Public demonstrations reflect general disaffection with the dictator’s “platform.” The dictator can respond by “reforms” that move his platform closer to the public’s, by ramping up repression, or by a combination of the two. In general, public demonstrations threaten to weaken the dictator’s power below the threshold necessary to stay in power. The dictator must do something to prevent this from happening.

The response of “constrained” (Mubarak) and “unconstrained” (Iran and Kaddafi) rulers has been strikingly different in the Middle East. The former have unsuccessfully used limited repression, concessions and material rewards in a vain effort to boost their political power. The morally-unconstrained have used as much repression as necessary while offering targeted material incentives (such as increased army pay and according to recent reports handing out cash). This strategy will likely work in Iran but fail in Libya.

For unconstrained dictators such as Kaddafi, there are eventually diminishing returns to repression. At some point, more and more segments of the population understand that they themselves are at risk and withdraw their loyalty. As the loyalty of the neutral or even loyal population collapses, the regime falls below the threshold necessary to stay in power and the dictator is overthrown. This is Kaddafi’s likely impending fate.

Notes: Research conducted in the Hoover Institution Soviet State and Party Archives over the past decade has aimed at applying the theory of dictatorship to the Stalin period. For those interested in our results, see: Paul Gregory, Terror by Quota (Yale –Hoover, 2009), Paul Gregory and Norman Naimark (eds.), The Lost Politburo Transcripts (Yale-Hoover, 2008), Paul Gregory and Valery Lazarev eds., The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag (Hoover, 2003); and Eugenia Belova and Valery Lazarev, Funding Loyalty (Yale-Hoover, forthcoming). The theory of dictatorship has been developed, among others, by Ronald Wintrobe, Bruce Bueno de la Mesquita, James Robinson and Daron Ademoglu.

Hayek’s Gloomy Prognosis for Egypt

F.A. Hayek’s most important insight is that we cannot have political freedom without economic freedom. Hayek’s inexorable Road to Serfdom, from which it is difficult if not impossible to return, describes a number of today’s troubled countries, and it likely portends the future of post-Mubarak Egypt. Those caught up in the euphoria of democratic street demonstrations must confront the reality that the long-run outcome is likely to be bad.

Take Russia and Iran as possible role models for Egypt. Despite their huge differences (a KGB state versus an Islamic theocracy), they share a common and sinister pattern: A revolution occurs (the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Iranian revolution); a nominal democracy is established; the democracy is hijacked by the ruling elite; the ruling elite (Kremlin-favored oligarchs, the Revolutionary Guard) gains control of the commanding heights of the economy; the ruling elite viciously blocks democracy and liberalization as mortal threats to their vested interests. Anyone who stands in their way is dealt with harshly as corrupt or traitorous.

Egypt is poised to follow this same path. Its private economy is weak. Some thirty five percent of Egyptians work for the state. Ninety percent of cotton spinning and sixty percent of fabric manufacture is in the hands of the state. The poor Egyptian public receives its food through state ration coupons as it did 3,000 years ago. Only ten percent of property rights are secure.

Egypt is currently a democracy in name only; the goal of its idealistic young “tweeter-generation” demonstrators is to make it a real democracy with real elections. Egypt has thrown out Mubarak and will surely punish the corruption of Mubarak, his family, and associates. The country is ruled by the military, who will oversee the transition to something that will be called “democracy” no matter what the outcome.

Herein lies the rub: Egypt’s commanding heights were under the shared control of Mubarak and associates and the military. His removal places a vast amount of Egyptian wealth up for grabs. Mubarak’s share may go to “society” or it may be gobbled up by the military, giving the military even more incentive to avoid the voter scrutiny and transparency of true democracy.

The truth of Egypt’s military’s economic clout is just coming out: The ruling military council is a strong advocate of state controls and a staunch opponent of economic liberalization. The military owns day care centers and beach resorts, makes television sets, jeeps, washing machines, furniture, olive oil and bottled water. Estimates of the military’s share of economic output range from ten to thirty percent. It enjoys huge advantages over private enterprises. Military enterprises pay no taxes, use conscripted soldiers, buy public land on favorable terms and have no obligation to disclose their activities to the Parliament or the public.

As in Putin’s Russia and the Mullah’s Iran, the Egyptian military can eliminate opponents through charges of corruption, collaboration, or other misdeeds. Threat alone will be enough to silence most advocates of reform and change. As in Russia, liberalization can be discredited by associating marketization and privatization with chaos and corruption.

Real revolutions always redistribute society’s wealth. This is why entrenched elites resist change and protect their vested interests. The Bolshevik revolution redistributed wealth from the nobility and landlords to what Lenin and Stalin called “the worker state.” The Putin revolution redistributed Russian wealth from one group of oligarchs to another. The Iranian revolution redistributed wealth from the Shah and associated businesses to the Mullahs and Revolutionary Guard. In a real Egyptian democratic revolution, the military would lose its wealth – either to a true democracy or to a triumphant Muslim Brotherhood, and it understands this fact clearly.

Among the first moves of the military government was to charge with corruption or force from their jobs businessmen and public officials favoring opening the economy and liberalization. The military is satisfied with the status quo of its monopolies, economic privilege, and insecure private property rights.

The Hayek model points to the incredible obstacles facing the true Egyptian democrats. The military “fox” is “guarding the hen house.” The young democrats must somehow figure a way to persuade the military to sacrifice its own economic interests and to do the “right thing” for the country. Judging from past history, their chances of doing so are remote.

Straight Talk: Why Would a Dictator “Reform?”

Dictators in the Middle East are advised by Western politicians that they should introduce democratic reforms if they want to stay in office. This might work for the most moderate of rulers, such as in Jordan. It worked in Spain and Portugal, but only after the death or incapacitation of the dictator made a smooth transition possible. For other dictators, there is no way to split the difference between a dictatorship and a democracy. No brutal dictator can navigate the fine line between meaningful reform and remaining in office. True reform requires transferring or sharing power with others. Once your democratic partners have some degree of power, they will make sure that you will be out of office. Pinochet tried to protect himself by parliamentary immunity and spent the final years of his life fighting off criminal charges. The “power sharing arrangements” in Iran and Zimbabwe have been shams in which the democratically elected partner (Khatami and Tsvangirai) is rendered powerless by the Mullahs or Mugabe.

Any brutal dictator who allows a meaningful reform is, in effect, committing political suicide. There was no chance for a Mubarak to continue in office in a “reformed” Egypt. Under the best of circumstances, he could have been a transitory figure head. At the worst, he would have been put before a firing squad like Ceausescu. Mubarak had no way of winning once the democratic genie was let out of the bottle. It was in his interest to keep the genie firmly locked in the bottle.

The current reform advice to dictators reminds me of earlier advice to Soviet rulers to allow meaningful reform of their political-economic system. The aging Soviet leaders after Stalin were not particularly bright, but they understood one basic fact: Real reform meant the end of the system as they knew it. It was not until Gorbachev – the first Soviet leader too young to be part of Stalin’s coterie – that the USSR was led by a communist party leader who did not understand that real reform would destroy the pillars of the entire system, which it did.

I presume that brutal dictators throughout the Mid East -- Kaddafi, Assad, the Iranian mullahs -- understand better than Gorbachev that meaningful reform means the end of their careers. Our pleas for them to become “democrats” will go unheeded. From their perspective, this is very bad advice.