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- The relentless persecution of opponents makes secretpolice forces indispensable for the survival of autocraticregimes. All the more surprising is that historical stud-ies describe secret police agents as remarkably mediocrein skill and intellect. Many members of Stalin’s NKVD, for example, appear to have been poorly educated, lacking the capability of other Soviet bureaucrats (Gregory 2009). This resonates with piecemeal information hinting at the poor quality of secret police officers in other countries (Browder 1996; Persak and Kami ́nski 2005; Plate andDarvi 1982). However, whether underqualified agents systematically dominated the secret police in any of these cases is still unknown. Notwithstanding this open empirical question, theoretical work rationalizes why dictators might staff key security organizations with incompetent agents (Egorov and Sonin 2011; Zakharov 2016). They suggest that leaders strategically recruit less-skilled officials, whom they deem to be more loyal. We advance these arguments by dissecting the supply side in the recruitment of agents to explain why underachievers want to join the secret police in the first place and why leaders accept them.
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