Authoritarian personality cults and signalling games

Xavier Marquez has an intriguing hypothesis.

Cults of personality are hardly ever condemned earnestly enough. They are ofttimes seen as a variety of freakish curiosity found in some authoritarian regimes, their absurdities attributed to the extremity egocentrism and megalomania of portion dictators, who desire to be flattered with ever greater titles and deified in ever more highfaluting ways. ...

In 2006 Nodong Sinmun publicised an article named ''Military-First Teleporting'' claiming that Kim Jong-il, ''the extraordinary master commander who has been chosen by the heavens,'' appears in digit place and then suddenly appears in another ''like a flash of lightning,'' so apace that the dweller satellites overhead cannot road his movements.

To the extent that cults of personality are condemned seriously, moreover, they are ofttimes analyzed in cost of their effects on the beliefs of the grouping who are exposed to them. ... But this artefact of thinking about cults of personality misses the point, I think. Not because it is all wrong; it is certainly pat that some grouping do become to conceive in the special charisma of the cheater because they have been exposed to the propaganda of the faith since they were children, though the evidence for this is scarce. Yet, though I do not want to contain that cults of personality can sometimes "persuade" grouping of the godlike character of body ..., they are best apprehended in cost of how dictators can command the kinetics of "signalling" for the purposes of ethnic control.

One of the main problems dictators face is that repression creates liars (preference falsification, in the jargon), still it is needed for them to rest in power. This is sometimes called the dictator's dilemma: it is hornlike for dictators to judge their genuine levels of hold ... Here is where cults of personality become in handy. The Nipponese wants a pat communication of your support; but staying unhearable and not saying anything negative won't cut it. In order to be credible, the communication has to be costly: you have to be selection to feature that the Nipponese is not but ok, but a godlike being, and you have to be selection to verify some objective actions display your undying fuck for the leader. ... Here the objective action required of you is typically a willingness to shit others when they fail to feature the same thing, but it haw also refer freakish pilgrimages, ostentatious displays of the dictator's image, etc.

What makes cults of personality interesting, however, is that the more fancy and over the top, the better (though the "over the top" take needs to be achieved by diminutive steps), since differences in signals of commitment inform gradations of individualized hold of the dictator, and thus give the Nipponese a commonsensible measurement of his genuine take of hold that is not easily available to the public.

I'm only excerpting the needed basic elements of the argument - to get the full flavor of the post you need to feature it in its entirety. I'm not sure that the argument is all right on the demand lateral - it seems to me all pat that dictators (like, in a such more attenuated way, tone stars) haw find themselves in their rattling possess actuality impairment field, and conceive more strongly in the fuck of their grouping than the facts would warrant. Even so, se non e completamente vero, e sicuramente ben trovato.