Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Department of Political Science, 2017.
Covert repression, while crucial for retaining control in authoritarian regimes,
remains an understudied topic due to data limitations. This thesis uses an
original dataset containing detailed information from a sample of almost 300
informants to the German Democratic Republic’s Ministry for State Security
(Stasi) to shed light on the way in which an authoritarian system can use,
enroll, and retain its informants.
Chapter 1 considers the way in which the GDR used its informants to
counter the effects of a destabilizing process. I conceptualize regime’s recruitment
of collaborators in terms of market interactions, where the society
supplies the potential sources, Stasi needs constitute the demand for them,
and the level of state control is determined by an interaction of the actions
of the regime with those of the citizens. A destabilizing process such as the
exposure of the population to West German TV shifts in the supply of informants,
and shifts out the demand. Hence, the price offered for the informant
services increases, but the total effect on the number of sources is indeterminate.
Data analysis confirms that informants in areas with access to WGTV were offered higher rewards.
A popular understanding of the operation of authoritarian regimes sees
them as using repression not only to suppress the opposition directly but also
to force civilians into cooperation. However, existing evidence shows that the
methods of informant enrollment varied considerably from coercion, promises
of benefits, to appeals to political conviction. Chapter 2 demonstrates the
mechanisms that determined the mode of recruitment, linking them to personal
characteristics of the informants (party membership, past convictions,
access to specific information) and the level of international tensions.
Offering gifts to informants is one of the ways in which authoritarian
states ensure their continued collaboration. Chapter 3 aims to understand
the relationship between the rewards offered to the informants in East Germany
and the information they provided. I find that the payments were
predominantly used as rewards, but they also served as incentives for further
collaboration. Moreover, introducing payments, while in general increasing
informant productivity, hurt the otherwise positive relationship between informant
tenure and report submissions.