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The Partial Effectiveness of Indoctrination in Autocracies

Evidence from the German Democratic Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2021

Alexander de Juan ,
Felix Haass  and
Jan Pierskalla
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Abstract

Dictators depend on a committed bureaucracy to implement their policy preferences. But how do they induce loyalty and effort within their civil service? The authors study indoctrination through forced military service as a cost-effective strategy for achieving this goal. Conscription allows the regime to expose recruits, including future civil servants, to intense “political training” in a controlled environment, which should improve system engagement. To test this hypothesis, the authors analyze archival data on over 370,000 cadres from the former German Democratic Republic. Exploiting the introduction of mandatory service in the gdr in 1962 for causal identification, they find a positive effect of conscription on bureaucrats’ system engagement. Additional analyses indicate that this effect likely did not result from deep norm internalization. Findings are more compatible with the idea that political training familiarized recruits with elite preferences, allowing them to behave strategically in accordance with the rules of the game.

Keywords

autocracyconscriptionindoctrinationpreference falsification

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Type
Research Article
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World Politics , Volume 73 , Issue 4 , October 2021 , pp. 593 - 628
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Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2021

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