ABSTRACT
Despite the prominence of violence in the authoritarian arsenal, dictatorships thread a line between stark repression and other modes of engaging rivals, critics, and members of society. Alongside state violence, one sometimes sees evidence of these alternative modes of engagement: in movement sympathizers who might have acted but did not, in bystanders who, made to fear movement victories, more or less willingly consume the promise of social order that state agents claim to deliver. Among the collection of institutions and actors we call the state, rivals may hold their ambitions in check while government seems firmly in control. Across the authoritarian order, the needs and ambitions of potential rivals are conciliated, intimidated, punished or eliminated. A dictatorship's efforts to retain power reflect a great many decisions, from which a strategy of domination emerges. 1
