On leniency and cruelty

[Dimentio]

Experience seems to indicate that if you are a dictator, and you want to stay in power while the people don't want you to stay in power, that you would need to massacre a couple thousands of them in order to make the rest of them calmer.

Examples are for example Syria 1982, Venezuela 1989, China 1989 (Tiananmen) and Iraq in 1991 (Shi'ite Rebellion).

Most dictators on the contrary have tried to stay in power with concessions, by for example promising a more constitutional system, sacking advisors and cabinets or instituting social reforms. This weakness is frowned upon by the people who want to overthrow them.

The question is: Why do most dictators avoid massacring their own peoples when they are about to lose power, and even go so far as to publically humiliate themselves?

[PhoenixAsh]

I think this is because not every dictator also wants to be a massmurderer in the international eye

some are quite dependent on the international support. Which may frown upon mass murder....;)

[La Comédie Noire]

I think it also has something to do with them thinking they can't get away with it. I mean you give some reforms and then get disposed of, you just might be able to flee, but if you take down a few thousand dissidents they'll beat you to death in the street. It really depends what the situation on the ground is, would massacre work or just serve to make people even more pissed off?

[Dimentio]

I think it also has something to do with them thinking they can't get away with it. I mean you give some reforms and then get disposed of, you just might be able to flee, but if you take down a few thousand dissidents they'll beat you to death in the street. It really depends what the situation on the ground is, would massacre work or just serve to make people even more pissed off?

I cannot think of one example of some megalomaniac, who has killed lots of people, who has been toppled through street protests (if such dictators are toppled, it is usual either through foreign intervention or through competing domestic warlords rallying support for themselves).

Those dictators who get toppled through street protests are usually the old usual types of dictators who basically are normal people.