Even the most powerful autocrats cannot rule alone.
Vladimir Putin in Russia relies on a select circle of oligarchs. In Iran, the regime's power is preserved by the Revolutionary Guard and its business allies. Viktor Orban has turned Hungary into an "electoral autocracy" with the help of a few key judges, political operatives, and tycoons close to him.
But to truly consolidate and maintain power, authoritarian leaders need more than just an elite. They need a much broader network of lower- and middle-level people: military officers, secret police, civil servants, bureaucrats, and employees who do the regime's dirty work every day.
Researchers have long wondered why elites remain loyal to authoritarian leaders. Much less attention has been paid to those below them—the people who are not at the top but without whom no authoritarian system could function. In the absence of data, it has often been assumed that such people agree to obey out of ideological fanaticism, fear of persecution, or a combination of the two.
New research, based on an exceptionally rich dataset from Argentina's "Dirty War" of the 70s and 80s, offers a different explanation.
It turns out that career pressures familiar to almost every employed person - the desire to revive a stalled career, get a promotion, or avoid professional failure - can be enough for employees to violate professional obligations, basic social norms, and even fundamental moral rules.
The people who make such decisions, the research suggests, are not necessarily extremists or victims of the system. They are often just average workers looking for a way to get ahead.
Career in dictatorship
The book “Making a Career in Dictatorship” by two German political scientists, Adam Scharpf and Christian Glassel, could be described as a combination of Hannah Arendt’s idea of the “banality of evil” and a business school manual on how to get the most out of bad employees.
Their detailed study of the Argentine military during the period of military coups and enforced disappearances showed that poor personnel - those the authors call "career-pressured individuals" - formed an important part of the secret police.
Working in this service allowed them to bypass the regular military hierarchy and advancement system. Through this roundabout route, they could achieve promotions, better salaries, longer careers, and larger pensions - all things they would probably never have achieved in the normal system.
In other words, future autocrats don't always need ideological fanatics, extreme rewards, or brutal punishments to enforce their will. They just need to find the ideal workforce: the frustrated and the average.
Data on mediocrity
The story of the research began almost by accident. While a young doctoral student in Buenos Aires, Adam Scharpf spoke with a government official who, in passing, told him that the intelligence officers who did the worst jobs during the military dictatorship were “basically idiots.”
At first, Scharpf thought it was an insult. Later, he realized that his interlocutor meant it literally: in his opinion, the military junta's secret police were made up of incompetent losers.
Upon returning to Germany, Scharpf told his colleague Glassel about it. Both men immediately saw the research potential. Argentina, it turned out, had been publishing data on the rankings, promotions, and retirements of military officers since the late 19th century. This meant that underperforming officers could be identified and tracked.
Since most of the secret police work during the “Dirty War” was carried out by the military intelligence battalion 601, researchers were able to precisely track which officers joined that unit, how long they stayed there, and what happened to their careers later.
The data showed that the casual remark from the cafe was accurate.
The Argentine military operated largely on a meritocratic principle: those who failed to advance were gradually pushed aside and eventually forced into retirement. But Battalion 601 offered a workaround. Weaker officers could transfer to the secret police, spend a few years there, earn promotions, and then return to the regular army - often bypassing their colleagues who remained in the regular units.
The worse an officer's academic performance at the military academy, the more likely he was to end up in Battalion 601. And once he entered that structure, the worst among them were often assigned to the most brutal units, where they carried out the daily tasks of torture and murder.
Such work carried a strong social stigma and a serious psychological burden. But that was precisely why the career rewards were greater. A short period in the role of a monster could professionally rehabilitate even the most unsuccessful officer.
Regimes and “loyal losers”
It is usually very difficult to obtain complete data on who the people who do the dirty work for the regimes are and what motivates them. That is why there is not much research that can be directly compared to the Argentine case.
However, available information indicates that similar patterns existed elsewhere.
Scharpf and Glassel report that in the Nazi bureaucracy, superiors skillfully used career pressures to recruit commanders for the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile death squads that carried out mass murders in Eastern Europe. Among the recruits were people with professional weaknesses: disciplinary blemishes, problematic records, lack of experience in the army or police. Zealous service in the death squads offered them a chance to improve their careers.
In the Soviet Union, the NKVD - the secret police that killed hundreds of thousands of people during the Great Terror of 1937 - deliberately recruited people with little formal skills and education. Many had only primary school education. Superiors fueled their fear of failure by creating a competition between offices: who could arrest the most people.
In the modern era, authoritarian leaders often first come to power through elections. They then gradually dismantle mechanisms of control, weaken institutions, and concentrate power in their own hands. This process is usually not as violent as the Argentine military junta or Stalin's NKVD, but in the long run it severely restricts political competition and freedom of expression.
Erica Frantz, a political scientist at Michigan State University who studies democratic decline, says that the process, despite differences from country to country, often has a recognizable pattern.
Initially, elected leaders with authoritarian ambitions appoint “loyal losers” to important positions to enable them to seize power.
“A leader knows that people will be more loyal if they don't have many other career options. When I say losers, I mean that quite literally,” says Frantz.
Hungary, courts and small careerists
An example is Hungary under Viktor Orban. He was first elected in 2010. In 2022, the European Parliament adopted a resolution stating that Hungary was no longer a democracy, but an “electoral autocracy.”
To make this happen, Orban relied on a few loyalists at the top, but also on a smaller number of ambitious mid-level people who saw politics as a path to personal success.
“There were certain offices that did the dirty work,” says Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor at Princeton University who has studied the breakdown of democracy in Hungary. She cites as particularly important the National Judicial Office, the institution that selected judges and controlled their promotions. It was headed by a person loyal to Orban.
At the lower levels of the judiciary, a small number of ambitious individuals implemented the government's agenda.
“Five or ten percent of judges, careerists, simply do the 'dirty work' to get ahead,” says Attila Vincze, a judicial researcher at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic.
Venezuela and a more violent path
Venezuela followed a similar trajectory after the election of Hugo Chávez in 1999. Later, he and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, used increasingly violent means to retain power.
To suppress protests and public resistance, the government relied on the National Guard, a branch of the military responsible for internal security, but also on armed civilian groups known as "colectivos".
The National Guard was considered the lowest rung in the armed forces in terms of prestige, says Alejandro Velasco, a historian of Latin America at New York University.
“If you couldn't find a job and couldn't get into the military, you would join the National Guard,” Velasco explains.
Colectivos emerged from informal neighborhood patrols, but as their ties to the government grew stronger, many of their members were given jobs guarding government ministries.
Authoritarian leaders often become too unpopular over time for manipulation alone to keep them in power. They are then faced with choices they can lose. They are left with a choice: to leave power or to resort to violent repression.
After his failed attempts to sway the 2024 presidential election in his favor, Maduro chose repression. He relied on the National Guard and the colectivos. According to Human Rights Watch, government forces killed dozens of opposition supporters and detained thousands of people after the stolen elections.
The American case
For Americans, this is not just an academic question. Many experts warn that democratic decline in the US is accelerating during Donald Trump's second term.
Erica Frantz sees parallels between Trump's rule and the elected authoritarian leaders she has studied in other countries. While Trump did not create the Republican Party, over the past decade he has reshaped it into an institution centered around him.
Some members of his cabinet and political appointees, especially in his second term, fit the mold of loyalists whose resumes would be difficult to pass for in any other administration.
That’s why, says Frantz, the Trump administration’s attempts to establish political control over the military, the FBI, and ICE are particularly worrisome. Elected leaders who “fiddle” with security services, she explains, are typically a feature of systems that have already shifted toward authoritarianism, not just democracies in crisis.
Scharpf and Glassel are particularly concerned about the planned expansion of ICE, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which they believe could become an ideal career “detour” for ambitious but weak personnel who could be used for anti-democratic purposes.
Concerns are even greater about the attack on the Capitol at the end of Trump's first term, although the loyalists at the time were less organized.
The authors state that the pattern for creating a loyal security service is quite clear: a leader establishes or reshapes an institution that becomes a "second ladder" for advancement, funds it generously, lowers the criteria for employment, and thereby sends the message that opportunities are opened up there for those who do not have them elsewhere.
At the same time, job and budget cuts in other government agencies create a wider pool of potential recruits. Finally, the political elite sends a message of impunity - assuring people on that “second ladder” that they will not face consequences for their actions.
According to the authors, the Trump administration is already showing some of these patterns, even if its ultimate intentions remain unclear.
ICE remains an anti-immigration agency, but it is slated for radical expansion, with a budget that could exceed that of other federal law enforcement agencies. At the same time, the administration has drastically reduced employment in other federal agencies, leaving thousands of people unemployed or in fear of losing their jobs soon.
Senior administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief of staff, publicly assured ICE officers of "immunity" after immigration officers killed a protester in Minneapolis in January.
At the same time, it has become easier than ever to become an ICE agent. Ryan Schwank, a former instructor at the training academy, testified before Congress that new cadets are graduating despite serious concerns from instructors that even in the final days of training they are not demonstrating sufficient understanding of the tactics and laws needed to do the job.
New ICE recruits now only have to pass nine practical exams to graduate from the academy, down from 25 in the July 2021 curriculum.
For someone looking for a career shortcut, it may seem like a great opportunity.
And for democracy - as a very dangerous sign.
See more:
Download the app and follow the news
FOLLOW US ON
