Authoritarian governments use massive projects like land reform to buy the loyalty of citizens before they even take power.
April 26, 2026
Original Paper
From Peasants to Communists: How Ordinary Citizens Invest in Authoritarian Parties
SSRN · 6640866
The Takeaway
Dictatorships secure early commitment from the public by deploying costly signals of their institutional strength. People do not just submit to a regime because they are afraid of the police. This research suggests that ordinary citizens make a strategic investment in a new party when they see a high-stakes policy that proves the group's power. By giving away land or building infrastructure, the regime creates a massive base of supporters who have a personal stake in its survival. This buy-in makes the authoritarian system much harder to topple than a government based on fear alone.
From the abstract
While dominant parties are known to enhance the stability of authoritarian regimes, we know little about why ordinary citizens would support them at early stages when their survival is uncertain. To decrease this uncertainty, this paper argues that authoritarian regimes can deploy a costly signal of institutional strength to increase regime commitment among cohorts that are yet to be socialized by the new system. Empirically, the paper examines the emergence of a communist East German state buil