Decoding Dictatorship: Experimental Evidence on How Signals of Elite Cohesion Shape Mass Compliance

Mass preferences are crucial for understanding authoritarian stability. Autocracies endure when citizens fear or quietly accept the regime but destabilize when they sense that dissent is growing. But how do citizens form such perceptions? We examine one key factor: ruling coalition cohesion. Because unified coalitions are more capable of deploying repression, we argue that citizens use signals of elite cohesion to adjust their willingness to support or challenge the regime. We test this theory through a survey experiment in Kazakhstan, randomly assigning respondents to scenarios of inter-coalition interactions ranging from personality cult-style praise of the autocrat to open ruler-elite disagreement. Our findings show that citizens are highly responsive to elite cohesion signals. These results shed light on how public perceptions of dissent and permissibility form, and how elite signalling influences the durability of authoritarian rule.