Reshuffles or Dismissals? The Logic of Elite Management and Autocratic Survival

abstract: Co-optation and repression are central to understanding authoritarian power sharing, but how autocrats implement these strategies with individual elites remains underexplored. The article proposes a theoretical framework conceptualizing dictators as managers of their ruling coalitions who routinely appoint, dismiss, promote, demote, shuffle, or reappoint elites for a mixture of strategic, nonstrategic, or even mundane reasons. The authors argue that autocrats have agency in choosing between dismissals and reshuffles as general elite management strategies. In the process, they alter the information environment and elite incentives with consequences for their own survival. Although dismissals as a general policy reduce elites' power, they also increase intraregime conflict and uncertainty and tend to have adverse effects on ruler survival. In contrast, reshuffles prevent elite coordination but ensure that elites have a stake in regime continuity. These arguments are tested using novel measures of dismissals and reshuffles in autocratic regimes and communist politburos while also considering the mechanisms and alternative explanations driving the results. The findings suggest that autocratic survival relies more on mundane and nonviolent elite management than seen in the predominantly conflictual accounts of authoritarian politics.