The war in Ukraine illustrates how difficult it is to be an autocrat on top of a command-and-control system. Vladimir Putin’s control-and-command apparatus is not as pure as that of the former USSR, if only because of the presence of oligarchs who have pecuniary incentives to run money-making businesses; yet, their main incentive is to stay in the good grace of the dictator. (I take “autocrat” and “dictator” as synonyms.) The cost of communications with the rest of the world has dramatically decreased for ordinary people, although Putin is trying hard to compensate for this with internal propaganda through state media.
Putin’s regime illustrates the well-known flaws of a command-and-control system. The lack of a free press dramatically limits the autocrat’s knowledge of what is really happening in society (and in the military too). But he has little choice because a free press would directly endanger his tenure in the job, if not his life. His minions are often afraid to tell him the truth as they can be held responsible for the bad news. The dictator is “isolated and out of touch,” as Putin is said to be more and more. (On the economics of dictatorship, see Gordon Tullock, Autocracy [Springer, 1987]; see also my Econlog post “The Autocrat and the Free Press: A Model,” October 15, 2019.)
The autocrat also obtains poor intelligence in military matters. His army is much less capable than he thinks; but an efficient one would of course represent a higher danger of coup against him. The military’s morale is low, in part because it is not easy to motivate a 20-year-old conscript to service missiles fired on women and children and to shoot foreigners whose lifestyles he probably envies. (“Some Russian Troops Are Surrendering or Sabotaging Vehicles Rather Than Fighting, a Pentagon Official Says,” New York Times, March 1, 2022)
As Gordon Tullock put it,
the life of a dictator is not an easy one, but there is no reason we should feel particularly sympathetic. No one is compelled by law to be a dictator.
Despite the myth or dream of the benevolent despot, anyone who (like Tullock) shares classical-liberal or libertarian values is happy that a dictator’s life is difficult, and hopes these difficulties more than cancel the benefits he may gain from power and stolen money. The lower the net benefits an autocrat can obtain, the lower his incentives to get the job or create the job for himself.
This is not denying that a cornered dictator may be a public danger for his subjects and, especially if he is armed with nuclear weapons, for foreigners. But this in turn does not mean that his violence should not be countered: resistance increases the cost to dictators, and the more so as if it affects their personal security. Opponents to a dictator, however, should make sure that they are not themselves, in the process, drifting toward dictatorial power.
The difficult life of the dictator makes everybody else’s life more difficult—except, at least for a time, for their minions and most important supporters and political clienteles. The current thinking about the war in Ukraine seems to be that, by intensifying its aggression, the Russian tyrant will win. But, suggests the Wall Street Journal (“As Russian Invasion of Ukraine Widens, the West’s Options Shrink,” March 2, 2022), this would likely not be the end of the story:
The early fighting by Ukrainian forces and citizens portends an insurgency even if Russia were to take control of population centers and stand up its own government. “I think [Putin] will have an insurgency on his hand that is going to be extremely wearing and degrading to him, to his military and to his economy,” the European diplomat said. “Ordinary Russians will be paying the price of this hubris and this aggression.”
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Mar 3 2022 at 11:26am
“The early fighting by Ukrainian forces and citizens portends an insurgency even if Russia were to take control of population centers and stand up its own government.”
What exactly IS Putin’s war aim?
Is it annexation?
Is it to put a puppet in?
Is it Finlandization?
Is it neutrality?
We really don’t know, but what I think many are overlooking here is that the instant invasion is an escalation of a previous conflict stemming back to 2014, a conflict where over 10000 people have died since 2014 and which has its roots in deep seated ethnic hatred going back decades.
Ukraine, NATO/neutral/puppet/nominally neutral by Finlandized/annexed by Russia?
Donbass, independent, remains part of Ukraine, or annexed by Russia
Nuclear? Zelensky hinted at this in February.
steve
Mar 3 2022 at 1:26pm
I would take some of that with a grain of salt as the US is not above propaganda. That said, remember Grozny. If Russia wants to win in the short term there isn’t much chance that can be stopped. In the longer term an insurgency is certainly possible. Ukraine had one in WW2. Insurgencies and the counterinsurgency that comes as a result tend to be pretty ugly. They can last a long time. We have to hope that the economic sanctions and isolation being placed upon Russia will help shorten the occupation. Not sure if Russia can increase trade bough with China, India and Israel enough to offset everything else it loses. It will certainly lose a lot of the cultural things it values.
Steve
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Mar 3 2022 at 5:51pm
The odd part is that it does not appear (or earlier did not) appear that Putin needed to be an autocrat to remain in power. He was genuinely popular for a while. It would even have helped to reduce Ukrainian resistance to the idea of re-incorporation into Russia or being part of an area of influence.
Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan
Mar 3 2022 at 11:48pm
The Economist (a formerly worthy newspaper) once claimed that allowing exile for dictators is important, because it makes them more willing to surrender power.
But knowing that failure would mean exile, rather than execution, also makes potential dictators more willing to attempt dictatorship.
Mr Putin should not be offered safe haven.
john hare
Mar 4 2022 at 4:29am
I disagree. A man with nothing to lose can go to extremes with no further downside to himself. In this case, if it’s win or die, there is a nuclear option. WW2 could possibly have been shortened with negotiated peace without the Unconditional Surrender policy of the allies.
It is roughly analogous to a police stand off around a hostage taker. The prison option is not attractive at all, except when the alternative is death. If it’s win or die in a no win situation, the hostages are much more likely to die as well. Exile for a dictator is somewhat similar to prison for a criminal. Loss of power to control millions at a whim vs. loss of power to control ones own movements is somewhat a matter of scale.
Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan
Mar 4 2022 at 6:29pm
Hostage-taking occurs exactly and only because it sometimes works.
And, in the case of Japan, that demand was quietly abandoned. But the demand for unconditional surrender was not merely a declaration that the Axis leadership would be stripped of all claims, but the nations under rule by the Axis states would be stripped of all claims; so the German people and the Japanese people were led to believe that they faced something like annihilation, and that impression is what extended the war. No one here is proposing to destroy the Russian people.
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 4 2022 at 2:12pm
Daniel and John:
You both have a point. On the one hand, if we (“we” who share classical-liberal values, who know economics, and who, by hypothesis, have a say in this matter) could commit ex ante to never offer safe haven to blood-soaked dictators, which would of course, as Daniel argues, increase the cost of tyranny and reduces the incentive to practice it. On the other hand, once a dictator who has not been deterred is in power and is committing its murders, it is tempting to forget our commitment and offer him safe haven to minimize the costs ex post. (A dictator should be exiled to poor and small countries with a high crime rate.) Once this is done, however, an original commitment not to do it will not deter dictators-to-be.
The problem is to find a way to make binding commitments. In fact, institutions (which also have their cost) seem to have developed to do exactly that. Investigations have started (both in the US and at the International Court of Justice) as to whether Putin is committing war crimes in targeting civilians. If he is prosecuted and found guilty of war crimes, there are few places in the world where he could live if he loses power in Russia.
Mark Bahner
Mar 6 2022 at 4:39pm
I would sure like to see/hear of economists exploring the “rent-a-coup” idea:
Rent-a-coup
Note that Russia is probably not a good country to start testing this idea! But Syria (Bashar al-Assad) might be a decent country to start with in exploring this idea.
The key thing for economists to tease out would be the appropriate mechanics of paying a country’s military to overthrow a dictator. Pay generals? Or only colonels and below? How much money would be needed? What should be done with the overthrown dictator? Should military personnel and their families be given sanctuary in other countries following the coup?
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 6 2022 at 9:35pm
Mark: Interesting idea, but I suspect that the transaction costs would be high: finding candidates who won’t tip their boss, helping to coordinate them, making the payments (which may be illegal in US law), etc.
Mark Bahner
Mar 8 2022 at 11:13am
Hi, Pierre: Yes, this is a lot like some of my other “interesting” (I’d call them “great”) ideas…such as paying people to “plant” fish in the ocean, or building *portable* storm surge barriers, or protecting houses from wildfire. They all have lots of problems that need to be worked out. But they are solving or reducing the impacts of even larger problems.
Look at the current situation: Thousands of civilians have already been killed or injured, and millions have fled their homes. Civilian residential buildings have been destroyed, and infrastructure (e.g. bridges) destroyed. Sanctions have caused the price of oil to skyrocket. The U.S. and others are contributing military aid…the purpose of which is to kill Russian soldiers who are simply obeying orders.
Suppose, instead, the U.S. and every NATO nation contributes to a $10 billion fund, proportioned to the GDP of each country. The fund would be used to pay the Russian military to arrest and imprison Vladimir Putin for trial for the war crime of targeting civilians. Let’s say that the maximum award would be $1 million, so at least 10,000 members of the Russian military would get money. Maybe the money would be proportioned according to rank…maybe with generals getting nothing.
That wouldn’t work? What about increasing the fund to $20 billion? Or $50 billion? Or $100 billion?
Surely there’s *some* mechanism by which the bloodshed and property destruction could be reduced, and the goal of getting Vladimir Putin in prison for war crimes achieved, that would be better than what we’re currently doing?
Thomas Strenge
Mar 7 2022 at 10:38am
This is a great discussion. I’m reminded of the case of Pinochet. Yes, he was a military dictator and murdered and tortured political opponents. But, he also left Chile more free when he retired. But then the left was able to exact its revenge and seek justice. This then created a signal that dictators should not retire. So what serves longterm goals better?
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 7 2022 at 1:42pm
Thomas: I was also thinking about Pinochet in the course of this conversation. Perhaps the principle should be that dictators don’t retire comfortably, and the institutional framework may have evolved that way in the past few decades. But it would be acknowledge that exceptions can be made in some milder dictatorship cases. The would-be dictator gets only a probabilistic reduction of his cost, but the sitting one knows that he may keep his life if he steps down before, say, he starts a nuclear war.
Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan
Mar 7 2022 at 8:13pm
The general problem of how to deal with transgressions is rife with difficulties, and amongst these is the challenge of reducing cases in which transgressors have nothing left to lose in further transgression. That problem is especially difficult if punishments are bounded or effectively bounded.
I don’t see that nuclear war should be regarded as a peculiar case (“Dead is dead”), and if we choose a positive n such that n – 1 homicides are somewhat forgiveable but n are not, then we seem to be engaged something like a Benthamite calculation.
Wherever and however a limit of semi-forgiveability is set, transgressive behavior will cluster just below it, and some transgressors will inadvertantly stumble past it.
Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan
Mar 7 2022 at 8:05pm
In-so-far as the evident totalitarianism of the “progressives” has provoked a backlash that occasionally entails praise for Pinochet, and in-so-far as the aforementioned “progressives” have long advanced a mythology that seeks to hang Pinochet like an albatross from the neck of economic liberalism, it is best to make very clear whether one offers Pinochet simply as a case in which a dictator voluntarily stepped-down, or as a case of a somehow good dictator who voluntarily stepped-down.
Jim Glass
Mar 7 2022 at 8:49pm
The difficult life of a dictator, and superiority of being an elected leader, explained by … GUESS WHO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML7bO-y5Vf4
(Kudos to Radio Free Europe, still doing the job!)
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 8 2022 at 11:02am
Jim: This first link does work from here. This is a remarkable video and I recommend everybody as a look.
Two hypothesis: (1) dictatorship is addictive; (2) Putin was lying in order to be accepted as a democrat (he had certainly already learned in the KGB how to manipulate people).
Jim Glass
Mar 7 2022 at 8:53pm
Hmm … trying again the GUESS WHO link.
It’s like watching a Twilight Zone episode.
Mark Bahner
Mar 8 2022 at 11:30am
Hi Jim,
Yes, that’s fascinating! It would be interesting to play that for him today, to get his reaction.
I was just thinking, in the last few days, that I’d love to talk to Vladimir Putin, to ask him what his long range goals are? After all, he’s 69 years old! Surely, he can’t expect to be in office more than another 10-15 years?
So what will he want after he leaves office, either through death or other means? Can’t he see that at least the western portion of Ukraine will never be happy with being a part of Russia? Does he want to leave a Russia that can only keep citizens within its borders through brutal repression?
Another thing I’d be interested in asking him about is his acquisition of wealth. What does he think will happen to it when he’s gone? If–as I suspect–his children and grandchildren will be able to keep very little of the wealth he’s acquired, what was the point?
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