Dictatorship and Information: Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Communist Europe and China

Fear pervades dictatorial regimes. Citizens fear leaders, the regime's agents fear superiors, and leaders fear the masses. The ubiquity of fear in such regimes gives rise to the "dictator's dilemma," where autocrats do not know the level of opposition they face and cannot effectively neutralize domestic threats to their rule. The dilemma has led scholars to believe that autocracies are likely to be short-lived.

Yet, some autocracies have found ways to mitigate the dictator's dilemma. As Mart...