What's the Right Amount of Repression?: UChicago Scholars Explore the Dictator's Dilemma

The world’s dictators have a problem: It’s not easy to understand how popular–and thus secure from threat by a potential challenger—they really are. But a new academic study shows that modern tools of repression may make this part of an autocrat’s unsavory job a little simpler.

Dictators face a fundamental choice: mobilize their repressive apparatus, such as the secret police or security forces, even though no actual threat to their rule may exist; or refrain from harsh crackdowns, even though the threat may be very real. In seminal work published nearly 25 years ago, the economist Ronald Wintrobe referred to this as the “dictator’s dilemma.” The more repressive is the regime, argued Wintrobe, the more uncertainty about the threat, and the greater the dilemma. 

In their new paper, “Is There Really a Dictator’s Dilemma? Information and Repression in Autocracy,” Scott Gehlbach and Zhaotian Luo from the University of Chicago, Anton Shirikov from the University of Kansas, and Dmitriy Vorobyev from PRIGO University use game theory to explore the nature of this dilemma, building on economist Ronald Wintrobe’s earlier, seminal academic work on the nature of dictatorship.

“When a regime becomes more repressive, there are direct effects of that decision—and indirect ones, too,” said Gehlbach, the Elise and Jack Lipsey Professor in the Department of Political Science, the Harris School of Public Policy, and the College. “The direct effect is that a more repressive regime can more easily call out the security forces or use the secret police. This helps the dictator to stay in power, though it tends not to be particularly popular among the general populace or the international community.

“On the other hand, the indirect effect, or what we call the Wintrobe effect, is that a dictator becomes less certain about his popular support than he would be had his regime acted less repressively,” Gehlbach said. “Who wants to share their true feelings about the country’s leader if it might invite a visit from the secret police? At the same time, the opposition may also become less certain of the dictator’s popular support. This uncertainty on both sides is what makes everyone’s behavior so fraught and unpredictable.”

“Some of the time the dictator is going to get this decision wrong and he is going to make an error of omission­—not mobilizing the security forces when in fact he should have to maintain power and control,” said Luo, an assistant professor in the Political Science Department. “But the opposition also could be making a misstep, not correctly gauging how intimidated the public is.”

One half of this dynamic played out before the world in 1989, when Romanian communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena met their demise. When the tyrannical leader went to condemn the unrest that had developed in the country, he expected cheers from the crowd that had gathered beneath his balcony. He was met instead with jeers and shouts.

But it is the other half that is solved by “modern” tools of autocratic survival such as semi-competitive elections. “Think about what happens when a dictator wins an election,” Gehlbach explained. “If the election wasn't too manipulated, then the opposition may infer that the dictator is probably popular, and so it chooses not to challenge his hold on power.”

A surprising implication of this analysis, says Gehlbach, is that “the availability of modern tools of autocratic governance like semi-competitive elections can, in fact, make the regime more, rather than less, repressive.” Providing more information to the opposition eases the dictator’s dilemma.

The researchers are watching current events closely. Luo offered: “As predicted, Russia—with its propaganda and rigged elections—became even more repressive after its invasion of Ukraine. It will be interesting to see how President Putin responds if there is an unfavorable poll or a big protest, in terms of whether and how he further mobilizes the country’s security apparatus. We can only wait and see.”

The co-authors conclude that the dictator’s dilemma is ripe for further academic exploration, in particular to better understand why more autocratic rulers have not always chosen to employ techniques such as semi-competitive elections—given these tools’ potential to resolve the fundamental challenge they face.