Existing perspectives on co-optation within autocratic regimes are essentially focused on how and to which degree important elitist segments are included in (or sometimes excluded from) core political coalitions. While this literature mainly stresses the different sets of formal or informal types of co-optation by for instance key actors’ incorporation into single party institutions or ruling families, the provision of high-ranking government positions or the targeted allocation of economic privileges, it is largely unknown what role measures of mass co-optation have played in order to maintain the stability of autocratic regimes. Additionally, recent contributions on the distribution of material resources within autocracies concentrate primarily on state revenues and do not adequately address the level of broad based material distributions. Based on existing theoretical and empirical accounts of how the distribution of material resources contributes to regime stability, this paper develops three different possible causal mechanisms autocratic regimes might use in order to cope with problems of mass co-optation: First, low marginal tax rates, second, flat subsidies with regard to day-to-day durables, and third, wide-spread public employment. Using a number of different regression techniques, we test, which of these three mechanisms explains the survival of autocratic regimes. Preliminary results point to a joint effect: All three mechanisms together contribute to the survival of autocratic regimes; while especially low marginal taxes and flat subsidies alone fail to provide significant effects. We interpret these results as evidence pointing to a much more complex relationship between regime survival and mass co-optation. Long-term autocratic survival may be supported by the joint existence of more than one mechanism of mass co-option.
