“That streets are peaceful does not mean there is no violence.”

Authoritarian regimes depend on repression, either preventive or remedial to protect themselves from threats.

“Preventive repression is aimed to render mute potential opposition and repress opponents before they carry out any activities that would threaten the stability of the regime. In this sense, preventive repression is ex ante with regard to public manifestations of protest and is distinct from remedial repression which occurs ex post, after prevention repression has failed and public protests materialize.” (Dragu and Przeworski)

Naturally, preventive repression is preferred because it is less costly and may be concealed, allowing the regime to maintain a democratic facade.

“With regards to repression, an ounce of prevention is worth of a pound of cure. No authoritarian regime wants to face a situation in which dissent had grown sufficiently powerful to necessitate large-scale military intervention in order to keep power.”(Dragu and Przeworski)

Preventive repression is exercised through security agencies, which carries its own risks.

“Preventive repression brings into politics an important political force: security agencies who may seek to extend their grasp inside the regime by engaging in political activities and power struggles… Ever since Edward Gibbons (2001[1896]) vividly described how the Praetorian Guards of the Roman Empire used their power to influence the selection of emperors, the fact that security agents can yield significant influence over their political principals has been the focus of studies of the relationship between rulers and their security agents”.

A second problem arises in the form of corruption when the secret police engages in graft, sell their services to private actors or invest in businesses. Dragu and Przeworski argue that corruption is more damaging to the rulers than political infighting because when agents have opportunities for corruption they have a weaker incentive to protect the rulers.

Either way, it is a problem.

“…in almost every autocratic regime relations between rulers and their security agents are perennially tense (Plate and Darvi 1981; Adelman 1984). A powerful security agency is a double-edge sword for political elites: it can be more effective in protecting the regime but it also creates a moral hazard problem by virtue of its de facto control over the means of violence.”

Threats to authoritarian rulers originate from two sources: the fellow members of regime elites, their closest collaborators, or from individuals potentially willing to engage in public actions against the regime (Geddes et al. 2014a; Svolik 2012; Greitens 2016; Bueno de Mesquita and Smith 2017).

No authoritarian ruler wants to face a situation in which their rivals become powerful enough to organize and threaten the ruler’s grip on power from the inside. Coup plots that are already hatched expose the rulers to the danger of having to engage in internal purges that undermine the cohesion of the elite and provide a signal of internal divisions to the potential opponents of the regime.

Consequently, authoritarian rulers primarily utilize and depend upon preventive repression, routinely exercised by specialized security agencies. The security apparatus typically includes three, not always institutionally distinct, bodies: ordinary police, secret police, and the germanderie. The secret police is sometimes euphemistically referred to as an “intelligence” agency, as in the Chilean Dirección Nacional de Intelligencia (DINA, 1973-77), or an “information” agency, as in still Chilean Central Nacional de Información (CNI, 1973-1990), but often it is officially denominated “Secret Police.”

The secret police employs professional spies and part-time informants to detect any potential opposition and “nip it in the bud,” in the language of the Paraguayan Stroessner regime. It seeks to identify dissatisfied individuals who are the center of larger communication networks (Perez Oviedo 2015; Siegel 2011) by relying on informers, intercepting communications, planting listening devices, and the like.

The “nipping” may entail physical elimination of potential adversaries (Gregory 2009), imprisonment, economic sanctions, prohibitions to travel, intimidation, blackmail, psychological and physical harassment, and the like (Plate and Darvi 1981; Adelman 1984; McMillan and Zoido 2004; Dobson 2012). Prevention may also include censorship, dissemination of false information and rumors, and distorting communication among the potential opposition (Koehler 2008; Guriev and Treisman 2015; Perez Oviedo 2015; Puddington 2017).

“today’s authoritarian regimes have replaced brutal forms of violence and mass killings with subtle methods of control and coercion: they have perfected the use of fear and intimidation to maintain their grip on power and have learned to rely on propaganda, censorship, and cooptation in place of large-scale repression of public dissent. Repression is indeed just one, even if essential, instrument by which authoritarian rulers maintain themselves in power (Gehlbach, Sonin, and Svolik 2016). Autocrats can coopt some potential opponents (Gandhi and Przeworski 2006, Bueno de Mesquita and Smith2009), engage in propaganda (Edmond 2013, Chen and Xu 2015, Little 2017), engineer elections to legitimize their power (Cox 2009, Gandhi and Lust-Okar 2009), or manufacture the semblance of a civil society by creating government-operated NGOs (Dobson 2012, Puddington 2017)”.

Repression is most effective when it is invisible, when regimes survive without having to beat, teargas, or kill their citizens. As someone has said, “That streets are peaceful does not mean there is no violence” (Przeworski 2015, 249). Visible manifestations of opposition occur only if preventive repression has not been effective to begin with, so that they represent failures of repressive regimes. And there is evidence (Dobson2012, Puddington 2017) that while autocrats may have increased their use of ballot-box,cooptation and control over information, they also learned to prevent public opposition from forming rather than having to squelch its visible manifestations.”

“The surprising conclusion of our analysis is that whenever the security apparatus has the option of engaging in corruption, it is a less effective instrument for defending the autocrat. The security agencies can and do engage in extorting money, perks, and privileges from the rulers, but they can be bought off at a relatively low cost.“

“Corruption is a more serious threat to the autocrat. If corruption is sufficiently rewarding to the security agents, the ruler knows that they will divert resources, so increasing their resources is pointless. As a result, the ruler allocates fewer resources to preventive repression, the regime is less likely to survive, and both the autocrat and its agents are worse-off than when corruption opportunities are not as rewarding.“

“One should not be surprised,therefore, that autocrats engage in anti-corruption campaigns and often purge their security apparatuses: the expected tenure of the heads of security agencies is short. The head of the Chinese security apparatus was among the first targets of Mr. Xi’s anti-corruption campaign. But, as we know (Shleifer and Vishny 1993, Rose-Ackerman and Palifka 2016), controlling corruption is not an easy task. Corrupt security apparatus is the Achilles heel of autocratic regimes”.

Source: Dragu, T. and Przeworski, A., 2017. Preventive Repression: Two Types of Moral Hazard. [Online]. Available at: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/pegroup/files/draguprzeworski2017.pdf [Accessed 17 December 2019].

An excerpt from Guriev and Treisman’s paper that summarises their key arguments is below.

“How do dictators hold onto power? The simplest answer is by means of violent repression. A long string of autocrats—from the military dictators Franco and Pinochet to the personalistic tyrants Mobutu and Somoza—have left behind them rivers of blood. Totalitarians such as Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot combined terror with ideology. Besides murdering millions, they indoctrinated citizens into creeds that demanded the sacrifice of individual interests to a higher goal. In a similar way, religious dogmas have prescribed obedience to incumbent rulers in monarchies and theocracies.

However, a less violent and ideological form of authoritarianism has recently come to rival the old-style autocracies. From Alberto Fujimori’s Peru to Victor Orban’s Hungary, illiberal leaders have managed to consolidate power without isolating their countries from global markets, imposing outlandish social philosophies, or resorting to mass killings. Rather than terrorizing or indoctrinating the population, such leaders survive by manipulating information so that citizens believe—rationally but incorrectly—that the leader is competent and benevolent. Having thus secured popularity, they use formally democratic institutions to ratify their rule, despite having neutered any genuine political constraints or accountability.

Compared to most other dictators, the rulers of such informational autocracies use violence sparingly. Rather than jailing thousands of political prisoners, they harass and humiliate opponents, accuse them of fabricated non-political crimes, and encourage them to emigrate. Moreover, unlike old-style autocrats, who sought to publicize their brutality in order to deter others, informational autocrats often conceal their responsibility when killings occur. Their goal is to be popular rather than feared. At the same time, they have to persuade the public that they do not need political violence to stay in power.

The manipulation of information is not new in itself—some totalitarian leaders were great innovators in the use of propaganda. What is different is how they employ such tools. Where Hitler and Stalin sought to reshape citizens’ goals and values by imposing comprehensive ideologies, informational autocrats are more surgical: they aim only to convince citizens of their competence to govern.

The informational autocracy shares with other authoritarian states the goal of empowering its leader to operate with little or no accountability. But informational autocracies accomplish this in a different way. Besides Fujimori’s Peru and Orban’s Hungary, other examples include Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Mahathir Mohamad’s Malaysia, Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey. The concept is an ideal type, so actual cases may exhibit only some of the characteristics. China’s recent party bosses also fit in some respects, but whereas the other leaders inherited flawed democracies and undermined them further,the institutions hollowed out in China were those of totalitarian communism.

The phenomenon is not completely new. One can see Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore as a pioneer of such “soft autocracy.” As we show later, Lee perfected the inobtrusive management of private media and instructed his Chinese and Malaysian peers on the need to conceal violence. Alberto Fujimori’s unsavory intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos was also a key innovator, paying million dollar bribes to television stations to skew their coverage. “We live on information, “ he told a reporter in one unguarded interview. “The addiction to information is like an addiction to drugs” (McMillan and Zoido 2004, p.74).

“…While some old-style dictatorships remain,more and more have at least some characteristics of the informational autocracy. There are probably a number of reasons. In a world of advanced technology and economic interdependence, isolating one’s country to preserve ideological purity has become extremely costly. Indeed, the internet makes it almost impossible to keep out foreign information completely and to prevent citizens from communicating autonomously. For this reason, concealing state violence becomes harder. Rising education levels also dictate more sophisticated approaches to social control.

Since the Cold War ended, aid donors and Western-dominated international institutions have pressured poor countries to respect human rights, raising the premium on models of dictatorship that simulate democracy. At the same time, the power of centralized media to set the agenda and distort popular beliefs remains impressive. All this has led autocrats to pursue the same goals by different means—by monitoring and shaping information flows rather than by relying on intimidation and ideological brainwashing.”

Guriev, S & Treisman, D. March 2016. How Modern Dictators Survive:An Informational Theory of the New Authoritarianism. [Online]. 1, 1. Available at: https://www.tse-fr.eu/sites/default/files/TSE/documents/sem2016/development/guriev.pdf [Accessed 6 December 2019].

It is important to note that Chávez ultimately obtained the presidency through a fair election. For a considerable period of time he did remain a popular leader. Authoritarians who are elected present a conundrum for liberals. Liberals support democracy but how must we deal with leaders who come to power through elections and then proceed to crush civil liberties?

Fareed Zakaria’s essay “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy”¹ (1997) makes a useful distinction between contested elections and civil liberties.

“for almost a century in the West, democracy has meant liberal democracy-a political system marked not only by free and fair elections but also by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion and property. In fact, this latter bundle of freedoms-what might be termed constitutional liberalism-is theoretically different and historically distinct from democracy.”

“Today, the two strands of liberal democracy, interwoven in the Western political fabric, are coming apart in the rest of the world. Democracy is flourishing, constitutional liberalism is not”.

The point he makes is that contested elections, even if free, do not necessarily guarantee the protection of civil liberties. What we observe now is that because of past intertwining of constitutional liberalism with democracy illiberal rulers are able to use elections to legitimise their rule.

In countries undergoing political or economic turmoil frustrated citizens may long for the restoration order. Anything may seem preferable to the chaos they confront. They perceive problems to be so difficult that only a strong ruler can effectively take charge and restore order. This leads to the election of the autocrat. The best example is that of Hitler.

Hayek recorded the popular sentiment at the time:

“‘We are living in economic chaos and we cannot get out of it except under some kind of dictatorial leadership”’¹

And observed that:

“Hitler did not have to destroy democracy; he merely took advantage of the decay of democracy and at the critical moment obtained the support of many to whom, though they detested Hitler, he yet seemed the only man strong enough to get things done.”²

Similar forces, lead to the election of some of today’s autocrats. By 1998, Venezuela’s economy was in deep crisis. Per capita GDP was at the same level as 1963, down a third from its 1978 peak; the purchasing power of the average salary was a third of its 1978 level³. More than half the Venezuelan populace was below the poverty line, while annual inflation exceeded 30 percent. In 1999 the voters rejected the traditional political parties and elected Chávez as president on the basis of promises to rid the country of corruption, help the poor, and reduce the power of elites.

While old-style autocrats resorted to mass repression to control populations a new style of elected autocrat emerged in the late 20^th century. Chavez of Venezuela is of this type. Other examples include Putin of Russia, Orban in Hungary and Erdoğan in Turkey. These new style autocrats have been termed “informational authoritarians [5]”

Guriev and Treisman argue that these new autocrats do not survive because of mass repression or ideology but through manipulating information to convince the public-rightly or wrongly that they are competent, meaning contributing positively to improving welfare. Provided the message is properly managed the public may believe this to be true, even if living standards fall, although too drastic a shock will break the spell.

1Zakaria, F., 1997. The Rise of Illiberal Democracy. Foreign Affairs Nov/Dec 1997, [Online]. 76, 6, p22. Available at: https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~lebelp/FZakariaIlliberalDemocracy1997.pdf [Accessed 6 December 2019].

2. Socialism and the Problems of Democratic Parliamentarism”, International Affairs, vol. XIII, p. 501., quoted by Hayek in the Road to Serfdom,1944, p71

3 Ibid, p.71

4. Kelly, Janet, and Palma, Pedro (2006), “The Syndrome of Economic Decline and the Quest for Change”, in McCoy, Jennifer and Myers, David (eds, 2006), The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela, Johns Hopkins University Press. p207

5. Guriev, S & Treisman, D. March 2016. How Modern Dictators Survive:An Informational Theory of the New Authoritarianism. [Online]. 1, 1. Available at: https://www.tse-fr.eu/sites/default/files/TSE/documents/sem2016/development/guriev.pdf [Accessed 6 December 2019].

A brief background for those not familiar with our former leader.

In 1992, Chávez and a group of military officers led an attempt to overthrow the government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Unfortunately for Chávez, the rebellion quickly collapsed. Chavez surrendered on the condition he be allowed to address his coconspirators on national television. He told his fellow “comrades” that their goal of taking power could not be accomplished, and he asked them to put down their arms to avoid further bloodshed. Many Venezuelans at that time were frustrated with their elected leaders and they were inspired by Chávez speech. In December 1998 he won the presidential election with 56 percent of the vote.

Oil prices at the time were at US$100 a barrel so he launched many welfare programmes and his approval reached 80%. Riding this wave of popularity, Chávez oversaw the drafting of a new constitution that gave him unprecedented control over the three branches of government. He continued to rewrite the constitution to perpetuate himself in power and remained in office until his death fourteen years later.

These are a couple of limericks based on Esse est percipi

There once was a man who said “God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there’s no one about in the Quad.”
 

A different author wrote the following reply

Dear Sir,
              Your astonishment’s odd.
I am always about in the Quad.
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by
                          Yours faithfully,
                                                  God

Dr Jospeh Goebbels was a master in the art of propaganda. What is surprising is the extent who which techniques he advocated are being used by informational autocrats today. If we are to recognise falsehoods it is useful to understand the techniques by which they are propagated. The key principles are

These principles are abstracted from Jowett & O’Donnell.

• Avoid abstract ideas – appeal to the emotions.

• Constantly repeat just a few ideas. Use stereotyped phrases.

• Give only one side of the argument.

• Continuously criticize your opponents.

• Pick out one special “enemy” for special vilification.

Of the more detailed list the following are particularly relevant:

Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.

1. They must evoke responses which the audience previously possesses.
2. They must be capable of being easily learned.
3. They must be utilized again and again, but only in appropriate situations.
4. They must be boomerang-proof.
5. Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level.
   1. Propaganda must reinforce anxiety concerning the consequences of defeat.
   2. Propaganda must diminish anxiety (other than that concerning the consequences of defeat) which is too high and cannot be reduced by people themselves.
6. Propaganda to the home front must diminish the impact of frustration.
   1. Inevitable frustrations must be anticipated.
   2. Inevitable frustrations must be placed in perspective.
7. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.
8. Propaganda cannot immediately affect strong counter-tendencies; instead it must offer some form of action or diversion, or both

Goebbels’ Principles of Propaganda Author(s): Leonard W. Doob Source: The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3, (Autumn, 1950), pp. 419-442Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Association for Public Opinion Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2745999Accessed: 23/04/2008 13:13

https://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/Propaganda/goebbels.html

Berkeley thought that when we say that a thing exists we mean that the thing is perceived to exist. If we do not perceive, it does not exist. Modern informational autocracies depend on manipulating people’s perceptions to allow them to accept falsehoods favourable to the regime while denying facts that are not. Facts and evidence no longer matter, all that matters is what people think is true.

What people think is true is based on the information they receive. Through a combination of censorship, co-option, threats and intimidation the media can be managed to deliver messages that maintain people’s faith in the regime. Social media with its emphasis on images and short messages can be easily subverted to deliver appeals to fears, emotions or tribal instincts in way that is not possible in mainstream media. Successful regimes are learning to master these tools to drown out or discredit critics while propagating messages supportive of the regime.

These are the foundations of informational autocracies. As Dr. Joseph Goebbels, master of Nazi propaganda once remarked: ‘He who runs the information, runs the show’.

My name is Pablo Mendez and I am student of political science. I am no no expert on this subject, these are simply ideas that I am working on. I am quite happy to receive comments, criticism or further ideas to reflect on.