Why did Putin invade Ukraine? A theory of degenerate autocracy
Georgy Egorov & Konstantin Sonin
Abstract
Many dictatorships end up with a series of disastrous decisions such as Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union or Saddam Hussein's aggression against Kuwait. Even if a certain policy choice is not ultimately fatal for the regime, such as Mao's Big Leap Forward or the Pol Pot's collectivization drive, they typically involve both a miscalculation by the leadership and an institutional environment in which better informed subordinates have no chance to prevent the decision from being implemented. We offer a dynamic model of nondemocratic politics in which repression and bad decision making are self‐reinforcing. Repression reduces the immediate threat to the regime, yet raises future stakes for the dictator; with higher stakes, the dictator puts more emphasis on loyalty than competence, which in turn increases the probability of a wrong policy choice. Our theory offers an explanation of how rational dictators end up in an informational bubble even in highly institutionalized regimes.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.