Dictators’ Threat Perception and Competent-Loyalty Dilemma in Security Apparatus

• In Event: Perspectives on Authoritarian Durability and Survival

Abstract

Under what conditions do dictators prioritize competence over loyalty? The competence-loyalty trade-off is a well-known dilemma for dictators. The literature posits that dictators prioritize competence over loyalty in their internal security apparatus when they believe the primary threat to be popular rather than elite (Greitens 2016; Zakharov 2016). In this study, we test this argument empirically, using a novel dataset of South Korean security apparatus officers from the 1960s to 1980s. We collect extensive records of individual officers from their memoirs, primary, and secondary sources. Using these records, we construct a detailed biographical dataset that allows us to measure competence and loyalty in many different ways. To measure loyalty, we examine each elite’s personal ties to the dictator – whether their hometown is the same, whether they participated in the coup together, and whether took up “dirty jobs” for the dictator. To measure competence, we use indicators such as university attended, officer ranks conferred, prior appointed position in an agency, prior civil service position in an agency, formal policy-related educational training, work performance evaluations, and standardized test scores. South Korea is an exemplary case to test this hypothesis for two reasons. First, throughout the dictatorial years of South Korea, the country underwent changes as each dictator’s dominant threat perceptions changed. Second, because of these evolving threat perceptions, the organizational structure of the coercive apparatus at different points in time was unitary or fragmented, which provides us an additional opportunity to test how fragmentation (or the lack thereof) affects the competency-loyalty dilemma.

Authors

• Myunghee Lee, Michigan State University

• Taehee Oh, Cornell University