COU 2: Aggregation in Autocracies?
This lesson just used the U.S. housing crisis to illustrate the claim that all political outcomes result from the aggregation of actions by large numbers of persons. Is the example of the housing crisis misleading in this respect? After all, the housing crisis is not just a political phenomenon, it’s also economic. It emerges from the buying, selling and building decisions of millions of individual households and companies, all influenced by policies adopted by governments at the local, state and federal levels. Maybe the fact that the U.S. housing crisis emerges in part from events in huge real estate markets – in which ownership of resources (in this case, land, buildings and capital) is dispersed among millions of persons – makes it unrepresentative of political outcomes more generally.
So this check of understanding will ask you to evaluate the claim that all political outcomes result from the aggregation of actions of large numbers of persons applied to a context in which it seems much less likely to be true: Actions by autocratic governments – i.e. governments in which formal political authority is concentrated in the hands of a very small number of persons.
In autocracies, all political authority officially rests in the hands of a single dictator (e.g. Germany under the Nazi regime), a small number of senior members of an exclusive political party (e.g. The People’s Republic of China since 1949) or a clique of military generals (e.g. Argentina during military rule from 1976 to 1983). Autocracies use violence and the threat of violence to suppress public expressions of opposition to and criticism of those in power. They sometimes hold elections, but they use fraud and repression to ensure that the outcomes of those elections merely ratify what those in power have already decided. So it would be reasonable to guess that the actions of these governments do not result from the aggregation of the actions of very large numbers of persons. Maybe those actions instead reflect nothing more than the unconstrained choices of the handful of powerful men (they’re almost always men!) who hold these governments’ highest offices.
Below, you’ll learn about an argument from two political scientists that decisions by autocracies about whether to start wars, even though they are officially made by a single supreme leader or tiny group of leaders, in fact result from competitions for power that play out through the actions of hundreds or thousands of persons. After learning about and reflecting on the argument, you’ll describe your own view of whether or not political outcomes in autocracies result from the aggregation of the actions of large numbers of persons.
Aggregating to Invasion
Giacomo Chiozza and Hein Goemans (Goemans and Chiozza 2011) argue that autocratic governments’ decisions to go to war emerge from competitions for power involving large numbers of persons. Their study explores how wars affect political leaders’ prospects of staying in office, and more specifically the effects of wars on the risks political leaders’ face of being killed, imprisoned or exiled as part of a coup or other violent removal from office.
Chiozza’s and Goeman’s study has a rich variety of findings and arguments. But there’s just one finding that you need to know about now: Based on close examination of dozens of cases, along with a statistical analysis of wars, international crises and the fates of political leaders from 84 years of the world’s recent history, they find that international conflict has a distinct effect on political leaders in autocracies: When leaders in autocracies initiate wars or international crises (by, for instance, ordering their militaries to invade neighboring countries), their likelihood of losing office decreases in the short run, along with their likelihood (again, in the short run) of losing office forcibly and being killed, imprisoned or exiled. This is true even though autocracies frequently lose the wars they start. Moreover, leaders in representative democracies do not enjoy the same benefit – i.e. starting wars does not temporarily strengthen their hold on power.
Chiozza and Goemans explain this pattern by first pointing out that the suppression of open political dissent in autocracies causes factions that wish to take a share of governmental power away from incumbent officeholders to see violence as their only effective option. As a result, leaders in autocratic governments expect the only substantial threats to their holds on power will come in the form of armed rebellion, coup d’etat or assassination. Thus, their policies are always designed in part to make their overthrow by violence less likely.
Launching an invasion of a neighboring country does just that. Why? First, it sends the military across the border and occupies generals and soldiers with the task of fighting a war. As a result, soldiers are unavailable to provide the armed force that would be needed for a military coup d’etat at home, and military generals are too busy fighting a foreign army to plan, organize and lead a coup. Further, any armed opposition factions with militias sheltering in the neighboring country get caught up in the fighting. Thus invasion of the neighboring county renders those armed groups unable to launch a rebellion against the autocracy a home. Since invading a neighbor ties down both the military and any armed opposition across the border, moreover, preventing a coup or rebellion becomes an incentive for leaders to invade neighbors. This, in Goemans’s and Chiozza’s model, raises the likelihood that an autocratic regime will decide to invade a neighbor.
Thus, if Chiozza’s and Goeman’s model is right, invasions of neighboring countries by autocratic governments can’t be reduced to the decisions of the few men who occupy the top positions in these governments. They emerge from actions taken over years and months by hundreds or thousands of persons in these governments’ security services, military forces and underground or exiled opposition groups. These groups gradually accumulate the resources and capacity to contest for control of government through violence. Once those capacities are in place, the (small number of) persons holding high government office sometimes feel compelled to forestall or prevent those contest for power by launching armed assaults against their neighbors. Such assaults, then, emerge from competitions for power that entail actions spread across months and years by hundreds or even thousands of persons.
Instructions
Write between one-half and one page of double-spaced text in which you (1) state your current view about whether important political outcomes in autocratic system in fact result from the aggregation of actions by large numbers of persons and (2) describe the thinking and experiences that lead you to your current view.
All views are acceptable, including “I think politics in autocracies doesn’t always entail aggregation of actions by large numbers of persons” and “I’m really not sure”. All you have to do is state a view on the matter and describe your thinking and experiences that lead you to that view!
Describing both the thinking and the experiences you’ve had that lead you to your current view is required. If you’re thinking “Wait, I have no first-hand experiences with autocracy!”, that lack of first-hand experience is actually a significant aspect of your experience that you should describe! If you have no first-hand experience of autocracy, then the only thing you have to go on is your own thinking and whatever you’ve read or heard from others. Writing that is part of describing the experiences leading to your current view.