Foreign Threats, Coordination, and Autocracy

We analyze collective action by citizens to protest an autocrat with private information about foreign threats. High expected threats prevent protest and allow the ruler to exploit citizen fears for rent expropriation. When expected threats are low, citizen protest undermines national security. To establish greater credibility and thus improve defense capacity, the ruler can undertake political reform that empowers citizens and reduces expropriation. Reform harms the ruler when threats are high, while for low threats the benefit of reform increases with the likelihood of attack. Overall, we show that the ruler's incentive to undertake reform is non-monotonic. We also analyze foreign policy, which can help explain why citizens may not protest. The ruler provokes international tensions when minimal protest scale is the hurdle, but not when citizens are trapped in coordination failure. Finally, we analyze international sanctions, which may have a commitment value similar to political reform.