Working Papers

Why Do Citizens Support Authoritarian Rule? Evidence from the Salvadoran-Gang-Crackdown

Why do citizens support authoritarian rule? Recent studies highlight how autocrats use targeted repression of groups perceived as a threat to build support among citizen bystanders. However, the conditions under which this mechanism operates remain insufficiently understood. I argue that in high-crime settings, targeted repression of organized criminal groups (OCGs) generates popular support for authoritarian regimes by addressing citizen bystanders' most pressing need: security. I test this argument by examining how the 2022 Salvadoran-Gang-Crackdown (SGC), a coercive anti-gang state of emergency, affected public safety and regime support. First, I use highly disaggregated gang-control data and NASA's nighttime light data as a proxy for public safety to estimate the causal effect of the crackdown in a difference-in-differences design. Second, I link the local safety changes to fine-grained, geocoded survey data to assess how targeted repression shapes support for authoritarian rule among citizen bystanders. The results indicate that the SGC significantly improved public safety in gang-controlled areas and that these local safety gains, in turn, increased support for authoritarian rule. Taken together, the findings offer critical insights into authoritarian legitimation through coercive repression in high-violence contexts.