A Glimpse at the Logic of Political Survival

How Leaders Control their Population by Keeping a Select Few Happy

Feb 26, 2009

Ever wonder how cruel leaders stay in power for so long, despite the fact that the people want them out? The answer lays in the way a population is sorted.

There are three categories of people within a population, according to the Selectorate Theory, created by Professors Bueno de Mesquita, Siverson, Smith, and Morrow. These categories are the Winning Coalition (w), the selectorate (s), and the disenfranchised (d). The ability for a leader to survive depends on the size of each of these categories and how he or she manages each.

Three Population Categories

The W is a small group of people that keep that leader in power. They get exclusive perks and kick-backs that the general population does not receive. These can be anything from lavish parties, cars, to houses.

The selectorate is the general subset of people that are given the opportunity to vote. They all have at least one of more main traits in common being. These traits can be birthplace and lineage, similar skills, wealth, and gender or age.

The third group of people is the disenfranchised. These are people are not considered in the polls. They are often indigenous people, the severely impoverished, or geographically distant members of any society.

How the Theory Works

Political survival is a game of give and take, and of much control. The W needs to ensure that they are keeping themselves and the S happy. If a country has a cruel dictator, this usually means giving the W lavish services and gifts, while giving only the bare minimum to the selectorate. In Nicaragua during the reign of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, twenty percent of the population was disenfranchised. The subset of people was made up of former African slaves left by the British, and of the country’s own indigenous people. The selectorate was comprised of the Mestizo population, at about seventy percent, and the W a small ten percent if not less. The W was comprised of a few strong families that often took turns as administrators, though never as president. The selectorate received minimal goods and services, enough to keep them alive, and see that the government was providing them with something. Yet, the W controlled so much that the selectorate could never get ahead, even if they wanted to. Somoza was able to maintain widespread support via his labor market reforms, puppet voting system and social services. His downfall was a hunger for power, and because he had a small winning coalition and a large selectorate he had more control than a leader with a larger winning coaltion. Running with a smaller circle makes defection more costly and limits competition.

By keeping a small winning coalition, the leader is able to create the public and private goods, tax base, and general services that he deems necessary. In Mexico, the PRI (Institutionalized Revolutionary Party) stayed in power for over seventy years by providing basic services and even more basic goods. They would go around, door to door in small villages and exchange tortillas for votes. The goal of any dictator is to keep his population desperate enough to where they still have something to lose, and their close friends happy enough to where they can turn their back to inhumanity.

Moncada, Carmen. Nicaragua under the Final Leg of the Somoza Dynasty. University of California, Davis. 2005

The copyright of the article A Glimpse at the Logic of Political Survival in Latin Am/Caribbean Affairs is owned by Carmen Sofia Grant. Permission to republish A Glimpse at the Logic of Political Survival in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.