Divide and Distribute: Authoritarian Distribution Under the Threat of Economic Sabotage

Contrary to conventional wisdom, few autocrats rely exclusively, or even principally, on repression to survive. Instead, they exploit a variety of distributive strategies, buying popular support and co-opting elite challengers as necessary. According to existing theory, however, none of these strategies should involve targeted goods to politically disenfranchised minorities or other marginalized groups. Yet in some regimes, we find this very practice, begging the question: why provide benefits to the marginalized? In answering this question, I explore the puzzling case of Qatar, where the regime regularly targets distributive goods to otherwise marginalized groups. Such targeting is simply inexplicable for existing theories of authoritarianism. To explain this behavior, I o↵er a novel theory of authoritarian support-buying under the threat of sabotage. Even groups marginalized from traditional venues of power can influence distributive policy by threatening to destroy capital or undermine its growth. In testing my theory, I draw on a unique dataset of GIS data from Qatar. My empirical strategy exploits the spatial segregation of groups to evaluate the relationship between distributive targeting and the location of marginalized communities. Ultimately, I show how the regime appears to target distributive goods to di↵erent communities, favoring citizens over non-citizens and potential saboteurs over groups with a lower sabotage potential. ⇤This draft prepared for the Comparative Politics Workshop at the University of Michigan. Please do not cite without author’s permission.