Political Rents, Promotion Incentives, and Support for a Non-Democratic Regime

make them better off immediately. Their positions yield a lower utility than that of an
ordinary worker. Moreover, the probability of being promoted in the future may be quite low,
because the demand for supervisory agents typically exceeds the number of rent-paying
positions. However, high inequality, which is the easier to maintain the poorer the country,
makes pursuit of a bureaucratic career a game with high stakes.⁵

The bureaucracy bears its share of costs, too. First, it has to protect its rents against
potential rivals and overcome resistance of the working population to redistribution of
national income. This requires permanent coercion of some sort that is costly. Second, the
incumbent has to repay debt to those activists, who have faithfully performed their duty, by
promoting them into boss positions. Unless sustained economic growth creates a sufficient
number of new positions to satisfy the activists’ demand, the incumbent bosses have to repay
the debt by retiring. As long as the bureaucracy is a collective proprietor, a bureaucrat’s
benefits are largely ex officio. The possibilities to accumulate personal wealth are narrow and
therefore post-retirement payments are negligible in comparison to bureaucratic rents.
Therefore, retirement is a gloomy prospect for a bureaucrat, especially if he internalizes the
utility of his offspring.

Incentives for incumbent bureaucrats to enter the contract are determined by returns to
the activists’ service and the cost of these services - the rents forgone due to “early”

⁵ What Soviet propagandistic literature used to say about a worker joining the party can be interpreted
as: more effort, additional duties, promotion to a position in the party bureaucracy or industrial
management in the future. For example, a Soviet sociological review of 1970s purports: “Once you
become a communist, you assume voluntarily an additional heavy duty to lead the others.” A
characteristic career path of a new working class party recruit is described in the following manner:
foreman - student in an engineering school - head of the planning department in a large enterprise.
The next step would be further up the ladder of industrial management or to an entry-level position in
the party bureaucracy. Eighty percent of party bureaucrats of that period followed this career path

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