📄 social_science

Monks, Martyrs &amp; Marxists: State Capacity and Religious Persecution in Communist Mongolia

This paper argues that state capacity is a critical precondition for systematic religious persecution, demonstrating through the case of communist Mongolia that while weak states can only target religious leadership, strong states possess the resources necessary to escalate repression to the broader faithful.

Original authors: Cornelius Christian, Matthew Milligan

Published 2026-08-06

📖 5 min read🧠 Deep dive

CC BY 4.0

Original authors: Cornelius Christian, Matthew Milligan

Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ✨ This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer

Imagine a world where the government is like a giant, invisible hand trying to squeeze a balloon. In the study of political science and economics, scholars have long debated how "strong" a government really is. This strength, called state capacity, is basically a measure of how well a government can do its job: collecting taxes, building roads, training an army, and enforcing laws. Usually, we think of a strong government as a good thing because it helps economies grow and keeps people safe. But there is a darker side to this strength. A government that is very good at building roads is also very good at building prisons. A government that can efficiently collect taxes can also efficiently hunt down its enemies.

This paper asks a big, slightly scary question: Does having a strong government make it easier to persecute religious groups? The authors suggest that the answer isn't just "yes," but that it depends on how the persecution happens. They propose that a weak government might only be able to grab the leaders of a religion, while a super-strong government can go after everyone, from the leaders down to the regular believers. To figure this out, they use a tool called a game-theoretic model, which is like a mathematical strategy game where two players (the government and the religious group) make moves to try to win, and the outcome depends on how much power each side has.

The Game of Monks, Martyrs, and Marxists

In this study, the authors Cornelius Christian and Matthew Milligan look at a very specific, dramatic historical event to test their theory: the destruction of Buddhism in Communist Mongolia between 1921 and 1939. They call this a "clean" case study because the government's actions were heavily influenced by outside forces (the Soviet Union), making it easier to see exactly how the government's growing power changed its ability to crush religion.

The Setup: A Weak Hand vs. A Strong Fist
Imagine the Mongolian government in the 1920s as a kid trying to stop a massive, organized soccer team (the Buddhist monks, or the "Sangha"). The monks were everywhere—controlling land, wealth, and even half the adult male population. The government wanted to get rid of them because their communist ideology hated religion. But in the beginning, the government was weak. It didn't have enough soldiers, spies, or tax collectors to catch everyone.

Because the government was weak, it could only play a limited game. It could grab the "captains" of the soccer team—the high-ranking lamas and leaders. It could arrest them, ban their schools, and take their money. But it couldn't touch the regular players on the field. The government simply didn't have the "state capacity" (the muscle and tools) to go after the whole team at once.

The Turning Point: Building the Muscle
Then, things changed. The Soviet Union stepped in to help Mongolia build a stronger state. They trained new officials, built roads, expanded the army, and set up a secret police force. By the mid-1930s, the Mongolian government had transformed from that weak kid into a giant with a very strong fist.

Once the government had this new power, the game changed completely. They didn't just stop at the leaders anymore. With their new army and secret police, they launched a massive campaign to wipe out everyone. They arrested and executed thousands of monks, closed down hundreds of temples, and nearly erased organized Buddhism from the country.

The Big Discovery
The paper's main finding is that state capacity is a prerequisite for systematic persecution. You can't just decide to crush a whole religion overnight if you don't have the tools to do it.

Phase 1 (Weak State): The government targets only the leaders. It's a "decapitation" strategy.
Phase 2 (Strong State): Once the government invests in building its power (army, police, bureaucracy), it escalates to "mass repression," targeting the ordinary believers too.

The authors use a math model to show that this isn't just a coincidence. Their model suggests that a government will only try to wipe out a whole religion if the "cost" of doing so (in terms of money and effort) is low enough. When the state is weak, the cost is too high, so they settle for just killing the leaders. When the state becomes strong, the cost drops, and they go for the whole group.

What the Paper Rules Out
The authors are careful to say that this isn't just about the government being "evil" or "ideological." While the Mongolian leaders certainly hated Buddhism, their model shows that even if they wanted to destroy the religion immediately, they couldn't have done it in the 1920s. They were physically unable to. The paper argues against the idea that a government can simply choose to persecute everyone whenever it wants; it suggests that the ability to do so is strictly tied to how much power the state has built up.

How Sure Are They?
The authors are very confident in their historical analysis of Mongolia. They point to specific numbers: in 1937, there were over 83,000 monks; by 1938, that number had plummeted to just 562. They argue that this dramatic shift happened exactly when the government's power (military and police) surged. Their mathematical model supports this, showing that the transition from "targeting leaders" to "targeting everyone" is the logical result of a government gaining strength.

So, the story of Mongolia is a vivid example of a terrifying truth: building a strong, efficient government doesn't just help you build better schools; it also gives you the perfect tools to destroy your enemies, one phase at a time. First, you take out the leaders. Then, once you're strong enough, you take out the rest.

Technical Summary: Monks, Martyrs & Marxists: State Capacity and Religious Persecution in Communist Mongolia

Problem Statement
The paper addresses a gap in the literature regarding the relationship between state capacity and religious persecution. While existing scholarship often associates high state capacity with economic growth or, conversely, with the transition from persecution to tolerance (as seen in early modern Europe), this study investigates the "dark side" of state capacity: the ability of a state to efficiently execute systematic persecution. The authors ask under what conditions authoritarian regimes can successfully destroy independent centers of power, specifically examining whether state capacity acts as a precondition for the escalation of religious repression from targeted leadership purges to widespread mass oppression.

Methodology
The authors employ a mixed-method approach combining a formal game-theoretic model with a historical case study of communist Mongolia (1921–1939).

Theoretical Framework: A three-period game-theoretic model is constructed involving two players: a persecuting State and a religious organization, the Sangha.
- The State chooses between no persecution, targeted persecution (of clergy/leaders), or widespread persecution (of the laity).
- The Sangha chooses its level of hierarchy ( $H$ ).
- State Capacity is modeled inversely as the cost of persecution ( $C$ ). Lower $C$ implies higher capacity.
- The model incorporates an investment phase where the State can pay a cost to reduce $C$ , thereby increasing its capacity to escalate repression.
- The analysis uses backward induction to derive subgame perfect Nash equilibria, determining how the cost of coercion constrains the State's strategic choices relative to the Sangha's organizational structure.
Empirical Case Study: The authors utilize Mongolia as a "quasi-exogenous" laboratory. The development of the Mongolian state and its anti-religious ideology were heavily driven by external Soviet forces (the Comintern and Stalin), allowing the authors to treat state-building and ideological intent as largely independent variables. The historical analysis tracks the evolution of Mongolian state capacity (military expansion, tax centralization, secret police reorganization) against the timeline of Buddhist persecution, utilizing quantitative data on monastic populations and qualitative historical records.

Key Contributions

Theoretical Mechanism of Escalation: The paper develops a theory positing that religious persecution unfolds in distinct phases. Weak states (high $C$ ) are structurally constrained to targeted persecution of religious leaders because they lack the resources to suppress the broader faithful. Only when a state invests in capacity (lowering $C$ ) can it transition to widespread persecution.
Strategic Interaction of Hierarchy: The model demonstrates that religious organizations with high hierarchy ( $H$ ) are initially vulnerable to targeted strikes but may rationally maintain that hierarchy if the immediate benefits of organization outweigh the limited damage of targeted repression, provided the State lacks the capacity for mass repression.
Reframing State Capacity: The study challenges the narrative that strong states inevitably lead to religious tolerance. Instead, it argues that in ideological contexts (specifically communism), high state capacity is a necessary condition for the systematic eradication of religious institutions.

Results

Proposition 1 (Hierarchy and Strategy): There exists a critical level of hierarchy ( $\hat{H}$ ). Below this level, the State prefers widespread persecution; above it, the State prefers targeted persecution of leaders.
Proposition 2 (Cost Regimes): The State's ability to persecute is strictly bounded by the cost of persecution ( $C$ $C$ ).
- Low Costs (High Capacity): Both targeted and widespread persecution are viable.
- Moderate Costs: Widespread persecution is only viable if hierarchy is sufficiently high; otherwise, no persecution occurs.
- High Costs (Low Capacity): Only targeted persecution is viable.
- Extreme Costs: No persecution occurs.
Proposition 3 & 4 (Escalation): A State will only switch from targeted to widespread persecution in a subsequent period if it has invested in state capacity and if the Sangha maintained a high level of hierarchy. If capacity remains low, the State cannot sustain mass repression.
Proposition 5 (Sangha Strategy): If the damage from targeted persecution is low relative to the benefits of hierarchy, the Sangha will rationally choose to maintain a high level of hierarchy ( $\bar{H}$ ), accepting the risk of targeted leadership purges rather than dismantling its organization.

Empirical Findings (Mongolia)
The historical data aligns precisely with the model's predictions:

1920s–Early 1930s (Weak State): Despite ideological commitment to eradicating Buddhism, the Mongolian state lacked the capacity for mass repression. It engaged in targeted persecution (imprisoning high-ranking lamas, banning the Bogd Khan title) but failed to eliminate the broader monastic population. Attempts at widespread collectivization and expropriation failed due to state weakness.
Mid-1930s (Capacity Buildup): Driven by Soviet geopolitical needs (buffer against Japan), the state invested heavily in military, police (NKVD), and administrative infrastructure. State capacity increased significantly (evidenced by rising tax revenues and military spending).
1937–1939 (Strong State): Once capacity was sufficient, the State escalated to widespread persecution. The monastic population collapsed from ~83,000 to ~562, and approximately 18,000 lamas were executed. The state successfully eradicated organized Buddhism, a feat impossible during the earlier weak-state phase.

Significance
The paper claims that state capacity is a critical, often overlooked, variable in the study of religious repression. It argues that the ability of an authoritarian regime to destroy independent civil society organizations is not solely a function of ideological zeal but is strictly constrained by coercive capacity. The findings suggest that regimes with hostile ideologies toward independent organizations may remain limited to targeted repression until they build the administrative and military apparatus necessary for mass violence. This provides a framework for understanding the timing and intensity of persecution in other historical and contemporary contexts, highlighting that the "dark side" of state-building is the efficient execution of repression.

The Game of Monks, Martyrs, and Marxists

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