TY - RPRT A1 - Schweighofer-Kodritsch, Sebastian A1 - Huck, Steffen A1 - Humphreys, Macartan T1 - Political salience and regime resilience T2 - Berlin School of Economics Discussion Papers N2 - We introduce political salience into a canonical model of attacks against political regimes, as scaling agents’ expressive payoffs from taking sides. Equilibrium balances heterogeneous expressive concerns with material bandwagoning incentives, and we show that comparative statics in salience characterize stability. As main insight, when regime sanctions are weak, increases from low to middling salience can pose the greatest threat to regimes – ever smaller shocks suffice to drastically escalate attacks. Our results speak to the charged debates about democracy, by identifying conditions under which heightened interest in political decision-making can pose a threat to democracy in and of itself. T3 - Berlin School of Economics Discussion Papers - 31 KW - Economics KW - political conflict KW - salience KW - democracy KW - sanctions Y1 - 2023 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-52085 UR - https://berlinschoolofeconomics.de/insights/discussion-papers ET - No. 31 ER -