Repression and Long-term Political Leadership

Abstract

This paper develops a model where an incumbent may try to bribe the security forces to repress the political opposition in order to improve his/her chances of winning the elections. Such situations can be demonstrated by the cases of Cambodia, Uganda and Zimbabwe where the political leadership has used repression in and around the election times. In a collusive equilibrium, the security forces produce violence and the leader responds by giving a bribe to the former, this pair of actions taking place in each period. A collusive equilibrium exists when the bribe that a leader is prepared to pay is at least as large as the bribe that the security forces are willing to accept. We find that a harsher expected punishment (e.g. a longer prison sentence) will improve an incumbent’s incentives to collude. In contrast, security forces expecting a harsher punishment will be less likely to repress. Furthermore, we discuss the circumstances under which windfall revenue (e.g. foreign aid, resource rents) may contribute to violence and when it may prevent it.