A/HRC/28/59 mutually sustaining interaction between loyalty and repression, but there are also trade-offs, depending on the target of the strategies.14 Both tactics require that Governments possess sufficient economic resources. The national economy, and more specifically the State budget, must support an effective system to buy loyalty or ensure repression. 20. Loyalties can be acquired through (targeted) economic benefits that can consist of resource transfers, subsidies, tariff protections and regulations that guarantee profits, employment and consumption. At the same time, public finance and repressive expenditures should be considered: the budget allocation and bureaucratic apparatus will reflect, to some extent, the repressive capacity and policy of the regime. The loyalty of the military, police or secret services in controlling or repressing opponents are imperative priorities for autocratic regimes that rule mainly through violence. Consequently, global data confirm that autocratic regimes frequently increase military budgets and often overcompensate the military police and other officials who control instruments of violence and coercion.15 Indeed, military expenditures used to strengthen the coercive capacity of the regime and its stability,16 have been found to contribute strongly to a country’s external debt burden.17 21. It is true that Governments can frequently sustain themselves by taxes, income generated by investments, trade in commodities and other internal revenue, allowing them to buy key loyalties and fund agencies of repression, but sovereign financing may frequently be crucial for maintaining autocratic rule and overcoming critical periods of dissent or economic downturns. With a longer time horizon in mind, it is reasonable to expect that external actors who contribute financially to the regular functioning of a regime that violates human rights are helping to consolidate it. Sovereign financing may assist it in attaining its principal feature: retaining power, either through the acquisition and maintenance of key loyalties, or the use of coercion to minimize and marginalize dissident voices. In many authoritarian regimes, the majority of the population remain in a situation of exclusion or dependency, unable to improve their condition or the way they are ruled, fearful that dissent may result in discrimination, torture or death. Freedom of association and assembly are limited, so that dissident voices cannot organize collectively or call for changes. Sovereign financing may serve to further uphold that status quo. 22. As money is fungible, funds lent or granted to a regime committing gross human rights violations might of course also be spent in a beneficial way. However, there are several reasons why such economic support may not be in the long-term interest of the population. 14 15 16 17 8 See Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2005); Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and others, The Logic of Political Survival (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2003); Ronald Wintrobe, The Political Economy of Dictatorship (Cambridge University Press, 1998). See Justin Conrad, “Narrow interests and military resource allocation in autocratic regimes”, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 50, No. 6 (November 2013). Specifically for military expenditures by Latin American dictatorships, see Thomas Scheetz, “The evolution of public sector expenditures: changing political priorities in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Peru”, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 29, No. 2 (May 1992). See Michael Albertus and Victor Menaldo, “Coercive capacity and the prospects for democratization”, Comparative Politics, vol. 44, No. 2 (January 2012). See, among others Robert E. Looney, “The influence of arms imports on Third World debt”, Journal of Developing Areas, vol. 3, No. 2 (January 1989); John Dunne, Samuel Perlo-Freeman and Aylin Soydan, “Military expenditure and debt in small industrialised economies: a panel analysis”, Defence and Peace Economics, vol. 15, No. 2 (2004); Russell Smyth and Paresh Kumar Narayan, “A panel data analysis of the military expenditure-external debt nexus: evidence from six Middle Eastern Countries”, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 46, No. 2 (March 2009).