All leaders of authoritarian regimes seek to maximize the longevity of their governments. In
doing so, they face a dilemma: first, they must ensure their survival against rival political elites, and second, they must prevent an uprising by the masses. This paper examines how agricultural and food policy is used as an instrument by dictatorships to solve this dilemma, and how optimal policy interacts with international food price shocks to affect the likelihood of authoritarian regime collapse.
By subsidizing powerful agricultural elites and reducing food prices for urban consumers, dictators can mitigate the threat of coups and uprisings, respectively. However, these two policies cannot be pursued simultaneously, and optimal agricultural and food policy under dictatorship must be a political trade-off based on calculations of the threat posed by each group to the regime. Under conditions of increased food price volatility, stable policies which are effective in the long term can interact in unexpected ways with food price shocks in the short term, decisively affecting the longevity of a dictatorship.
