The Autocratic Welfare State Resource Distribution, Credible Commitments and Political Survival

Abstract

We investigate the adoption and characteristics of social welfare policies in autocracies. If one considers social policies merely as a tool for progressive redistribution to those in need, one might not expect autocratic regimes to spend resources on them. Empirically, however, several autocracies do have extensive welfare programs covering different types of risks. We argue that autocrats often implement such programs for political survival reasons. Targeted welfare programs allow autocrats to make credible commitments on the distribution of resources to their ruling coalition also in the future, thus reducing the probability of revolts or coups. Our argument generates a number of quite different empirical implications, which we test using our novel Social Policies Around the World dataset: In line with our expectations, we, for instance, find that autocracies are as likely as democracies to have old-age pension systems, but autocracies tend to have less universal systems targeted towards a narrower group of recipients. We also find that single-party regimes are more strongly associated with the existence of pension programs than military regimes and monarchies. Although the evidence is far from clear, we find some indications that social policy programs are adopted in contexts when autocratic regimes face graver threats to their survival, and that having pension systems may reduce the probability of autocratic regime breakdown, and of democratization more in particular.