Marcel Dirsus – “Peaceful protests can bring down the most powerful dictators”
The author of ‘How Tyrants Fall: And How Nations Survive’ presents a compelling analysis of how dictators come to power, and how democracies can create mechanisms to prevent the emergence of tyrants
How do you draw a distinction between a tyrant in an authoritarian regime and a cruel leader in a democracy although there might be a lot of similarities between the two?
Democratic rulers can be cruel, but they face more constraints than tyrants. Not only do they face independent courts and investigative journalists, they must keep a much larger share of the population on their side to maintain power. In combination, their room for manoeuvre is smaller than that of dictators.
How challenging is it for dictators to maintain a continued grip on power?
Unlike democratic leaders, dictators have a high chance of being forced into exile, imprisoned or even killed when they are toppled. As a result, they have to try their best to maintain power. But doing so is extremely challenging because it requires constant trade-offs. If they funnel money to the palace elites or generals at the top, the disgruntled masses may rise up in protest. If they weaken their military to make sure it doesn’t threaten their rule, they become more vulnerable to rebels or foreign invasion. When dictators get it wrong just once, they can lose power and maybe life.
How do the tyrants guard against their own generals that may be secretly plotting against them?
The men with guns are a major threat to all tyrants. If they don’t manage them, they will fall because the day will come when one of the generals decides that he should be in charge. The most effective way to “coup-proof” the regime is to split the military. Instead of just the regular military, the dictator then has the regular military, a parallel military force and perhaps also a militarised palace guard. The same for intelligence services. The intelligence agents are now spying on each other and no single part of the security services can take power without the threat of having to fight another. That prospect, in turn, makes coup attempts much less attractive.
How important are people’s protests to resist the anti-people policies and unbridled force used by dictators as opposed to armed rebellion?
It’s somewhat counter intuitive, but peaceful protests can bring down even the most powerful dictators. This works because protesters have a “participation advantage”. Few people would join an armed rebellion, but just about anyone can join a protest march. Once enough people are out in the streets, the dictator is forced into a situation in which he can only lose. If he doesn’t use violence, he looks weak. If he does, he risks a backlash, leading to more protests. As more violence is necessary to contain the threat, the regime may crumble under the weight of its own repression as palace elites or soldiers refuse to go along with killing their own people. And just like that, tyrants can lose power in the blink of an eye.
What are some of the lessons for democracies who don’t live under dictatorial regimes but who have to deal with such regimes from the outside?
We have to be realistic about the way these regimes function. There’s always a difference between the interests of individual leaders and national interests, but in dictatorships, the difference can be extreme. To provide just one example: Policies designed to inflict costs on North Korea as a whole are unlikely to be effective to sway Pyongyang since Kim Jong-un can ignore the vast majority of the population and still maintain power. Democracies need to adapt their policies accordingly.
You write that tyrants are not insane, most of them are rational and haven’t lost their minds. You also state that “tyranny often looks remarkably stable, after all.” What do you mean?
Too often, we have this image of tyrants as irrational madmen immune to incentive. But that’s just not the case; the vast majority of them are rational. Because if they weren’t, they would be likely to lose power very quickly -- in part because it’s so difficult to manage the trade-offs we discussed earlier.
Authoritarian regimes can look stable, but they rarely are because political systems designed to keep a very small group of people in power are not good at ensuring continuity. For example, one of the key weaknesses of dictatorship is succession. If a democratic leader loses power, the aftermath is (usually) ordered and predictable. When a tyrant dies, back room conflict over succession can easily turn into shooting.
How can democracies create preventive mechanisms to prevent dictatorships and tyrants from coming to power?
One thing that makes dictators appealing to a lot of people is the impression that they get things done, especially in comparison to democracies. Reality is a lot more complicated, of course, but democracies must do a much better job to deliver for their citizens. People want jobs, functioning infrastructure and security. If democratic leaders do a good job at looking after the needs of voters, tyranny becomes much less attractive. As the author of a book about the fragility of dictatorial regimes, I also think we need to talk more about the inherent weaknesses of tyrants.
Majid Maqbool is an independent journalist based in Kashmir.