Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Inside Autocracy

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Although autocracies constitute forty percent of the world's regimes, social scientists lack a sophisticated account of political competition within those regimes. This project goes "inside autocracy" in the Republic of Congo to answer three questions. Under what conditions do senior military and ministry elites attempt coups d'état or struggle for greater spoils from the autocrat? What forms do these struggles take? And how do autocrats adjust survival strategies in order to maintain a stable coalition despite declining population welfare? Since these questions require unusual access to political elites, the project focuses on one contemporary autocracy: Congo, ruled by Denis Sassou-Nguesso for all but five years since 1979. Despite the appearance of stability, political competition among the military and ministerial elite is intense and varied. Since Sassou-Nguesso's return to power after the 1997 civil war, elites have sought to demonstrate their political relevance to the government. Disgruntled military leaders occasionally foster violent conflict in the countryside; frustrated civilian leaders mobilize dissidents. Elite competition was even more violent during Sassou-Nguesso's first reign, between 1979 and 1992, when he was the frequent target of coup d?état attempts. Survival in the midst of this competition seems to require political genius. To prevent elite conspiracies, Sassou-Nguesso employs a range of survival strategies designed to recruit elites into the coalition, induce their compliance with his orders, and then monitor their activities. He encumbers some elites in marriage networks, forces others to join secret societies, subjects some to a parallel government, and prefers everyone to live in close geographic proximity. These survival strategies, historians find, are common in autocracies. Yet contemporary political science does little to illuminate these dynamics. Political scientists generally believe autocrats create legislatures or political parties to enable commitments with their elite, moderating incentives for coups d?état. In fact, autocrats typically inherit political institutions upon claiming power. To understand elite challenge and autocratic durability, this project builds models in which Sassou-Nguesso inherits formal and informal political institutions: the party and electoral system, and a set of military and financial elites. These institutions determine the survival strategies available to the autocrat. The project's models then explain how Sassou-Nguesso varies survival strategies across elites to maintain a stable coalition. The research substantiates this theoretical account with quantitative and qualitative methods. The empirical centerpiece is a dataset on 1,300 Congolese elites since 1970. The project makes broader contributions as well. By probing the sources of autocrats' longevity in power, the project enhances understanding of the prospects for democratization. Findings will be of interest to journalists, the foreign aid community, and non-governmental organizations.