Gde Dwitya Arief MeteraDjayadi HananBah, Musa2024-09-092024-09-0920242024-09-02https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14576/318The dynamics of authoritarian power consolidation is receiving more attention today than it has ever been before as a result of rising authoritarianism and democratic backsliding. However, there exists an undertheorized and variations on autocrat’s decision calculus for prioritizing repression over co-optation, vice versa. Drawing from this, I make two assumptions that state: 1. Low resource endowment leads to high repression, and 2. High resource endowment leads to low repression and high co-optation. To understand this phenomenon, I compared Yahya Jammeh (1994–2016) in the Gambia (a low resource authoritarian regime) and Suharto (1966–1998) in Indonesia (a high resource authoritarian regime). I used the Gambian case (1994-2016) to explain the first assumption, and the second assumption is examined using the case of Indonesia (1965-1998). By observation, both regimes on the surface appear similar as both were military juntas in Muslimmajority countries. However, the literature shows that their authoritarian strategies and tactics varied in profoundly – Jammeh primarily imposed repression as strategy, whereas Suharto was inclined more towards co-optation. However, I do not argue that this explanation is exclusive, as it is context dependent. To examine this phenomenon, I drew data from government websites, international reports, journal articles, news outlets, and other online resources. Thus, this study intends to contribute to the understanding of autocrats’ decision-making strategyies.enAll Rights ReservedAutocratAuthoritarianismRepressionCo-optationResource endowmentThesisNIDN2010028604NIDN0329017201KODEPRODI67101#Political ScienceNIM02212220001