Whom to Repress: Tall Poppies, Key Players, and Weakest Links

Abstract

This paper presents a game-theoretic model where dissidents with heterogeneous abilities and motivations contribute to collective action. A regime demotivates dissidents by preemptively increasing their costs of contributing, using a budget that can be spread across them in any way desired. The regime’s optimal targeting strategy is shown to depend on the (technological) degree of complementarity between dissidents’ contributions. For low complementarity, it is optimal to equalize all dissidents’ strengths (where strength depends both on motivation and ability; tall-poppies strategy). For intermediate complementarity, it is optimal to focus all repression on the most able dissidents (key-player strategy). For high complementarity, it is optimal to focus all repression on the least-motivated dissidents (weakest-link strategy). The range of intermediate complementarities for which the key-player strategy is optimal is larger, the larger heterogeneity in abilities. The paper finds indication for the use of these strategies in concrete examples of preemptive repression.