Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century

by Sergei Guriev

The spin dictator’s key challenge is to prevent the informed from puncturing his popularity and mobilizing the public against him. But how? When state coffers are full, he can co-opt his critics. He can buy their silence or even hire them to produce his propaganda. In Putin’s Russia and Nazarbayev’s Kazakhstan, pro-regime TV networks recruited the country’s talented college graduates. Other leaders—from Peru’s Alberto Fujimori to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán—have bribed private media barons with payoffs, scoops, and government advertising. When short of money, dictators censor the informed and their media. As growth rates and state revenue fell in Russia and Kazakhstan recently, press restrictions tightened. In fact, most dictators do a bit of both: some critics are cheaper to censor, others to bribe.