2 - A Theory of Elite Cohesion, Coercive Capacity, and Authoritarian Social Order

Summary

This chapter lays out a novel theory of elite cohesion, coercive capacity, and authoritarian social order. Enabling and controlling coercive agents is a fundamental challenge confronting all dictators. Actors like secret police chiefs pose a grave threat to incumbent authoritarian elites because they hold the means of violence and could use them to overthrow their masters. Elites’ task of monitoring and controlling their coercive agents is a collective action problem. All members of an authoritarian ruling coalition are better off if they cooperate to control coercive agents. However, individual authoritarian elites have incentives to defect from cooperation. When authoritarian elites cannot cooperate to prevent insubordination by coercive agents, they reduce coercive capacity. Institutions promote authoritarian elite cohesion. They provide structures of shared expectations or focal points that allow authoritarian elites to pool their resources, cooperate, and control coercive agents. In Cold War communist Central and Eastern Europe, Stalinism was the institutional structure that promoted elite cohesion and led to the construction of large, capable coercive institutions across the region.