Dictators Walking the Mogadishu Line: How Men Become Monsters and Monsters Become Men

38 Pages Posted: 10 Jan 2017

See all articles by Mare Sarr

Mare Sarr

University of Cape Town - School of Economics

Date Written: August 3, 2016

Abstract

History offers many examples of dictators who worsened their behavior significantly over time (like Zimbabwe's Mugabe) as well as dictators who displayed remarkable improvements (like Rawlings of Ghana). The authors show that such mutations can result from rational behavior when the dictator's flow use of repression is complementary to his stock of wrongdoings: past wrongdoings then perpetuate further wrongdoings and the dictator can unintentionally get trapped in a repressive steady state where he himself suffers from ex-post regret. This then begs the question why such a dictator would ever choose to do wrong in the first place. The authors show that this can be explained from the dictator's uncertainty over his degree of impunity in relation to wrongdoing, which induces him to experiment along this dimension. This produces a setting where any individual rising to power can end up as either a moderate leader, or as a dreaded tyrant. Since derailment is accidental and accompanied by ex-post regret, increasing accountability can be in the interest of both the public and the dictator.

Keywords: Industrial Economics, Economic Theory & Research, Economic Growth

Suggested Citation

Sarr, Mare, Dictators Walking the Mogadishu Line: How Men Become Monsters and Monsters Become Men (August 3, 2016). World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 7778, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2895484

Mare Sarr

University of Cape Town - School of Economics ( email )

Private Bag X3
Rondebosch, Cape Town 7701
South Africa
+27 (0)21 650 2982 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/site/sarrmare/

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
52
Abstract Views
324
Rank
687,410
PlumX Metrics