“Captain Gains” on Capitol Hill

2025-12-0313:50829584www.nber.org

Skip to main content Using transaction-level data on US congressional stock trades, we find that lawmakers who later ascend to leadership positions perform similarly to matched peers beforehand but…

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Using transaction-level data on US congressional stock trades, we find that lawmakers who later ascend to leadership positions perform similarly to matched peers beforehand but outperform them by 47 percentage points annually after ascension. Leaders’ superior performance arises through two mechanisms. The political influence channel is reflected in higher returns when their party controls the chamber, sales of stocks preceding regulatory actions, and purchase of stocks whose firms receiving more government contracts and favorable party support on bills. The corporate access channel is reflected in stock trades that predict subsequent corporate news and greater returns on donor-owned or home-state firms.

We thank comments from Sumit Agarwal, Ron Kaniel, Roni Michaely, Lyndon Moore, Antoinette Schoar, and seminar/conference participants at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Columbia Business School, Deakin University, Macquarie University, Peking University (HSBC and Guanghua), Shanghai Lixin University of Accounting and Finance, Tsinghua University, University of Sydney, University of Technology Sydney, 2023 Australasian Finance and Banking Conference, 2023 Finance Down Under, and 2023 Five Star Workshop in Finance for their helpful comments. We thank Lei Chen, Jingru Pan, Yiyun Yan, Zitong Zeng, and Tianyue Zheng for their excellent research assistance. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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Comments

By agosta 2025-12-0321:506 reply

They simply shouldn't be able to trade individual stocks. Requiring them to tell the world the exact second they're buying a stock doesn't change that that purchase was made to make money. If you're the elected authority who, by your rule, creates corporate winners and losers, we should not merely have to hope that your rule benefits us more than it does you. The job description is clear - you're a civil servant. If doing your job as a senator is unappealing to you because you can no longer invest in individual companies, then don't let the door hit you on the way out. Goodbye

By thatcat 2025-12-046:051 reply

Full reform: Select representatives randomly like jurors to prevent maligned motives. If selected there is temporarily a freeze on their assets and they move to dormatories on a political campus built around the White house with a panopticon of cameras 24/7 live streaming the political process with ads to generate revenue to pay down the debt. All communication during this period is public record and searchable, ads will be included in the results. Run it like the reality TV show it has become and pay them current per capita gdp, they can get a raise by increasing it.

By DANmode 2025-12-0418:27

You “overran first base”.

By rayiner 2025-12-0322:273 reply

Correct. We should pay Congress critters a million dollars a year like in Singapore and then require them to hold all assets in a blind trust.

By sackfield 2025-12-040:121 reply

Yes, and to keep it like Singapore, lets increase the penalties for financial mismanagement.

By amypetrik8 2025-12-040:462 reply

also to keep it like Singapore, let's deport all people illegally (but beat the crap out of them first), execute all drug dealers, execute all drug addicts, and most other criminals - beat the crap out of them and release.

the nice thing about common sense beatings is the cost of prison, housing, food, etc. is all zero, and the whole prison political topic is a non-issue. beatings are in fact extremely efficient, effective, and cheap, which is why lee kwon yew adopted them

By yunohn 2025-12-0411:561 reply

I dunno about you, but the USA has never been known for non-violent treatment of immigrants, and if anything, 2025 is not the year to claim such a high ground.

By rayiner 2025-12-0415:02

I assumed OP’s point was coming from a place of admiration for Singapore, not trying to claim the moral high ground. It’s remarkable what Singapore has been able to achieve through a disciplined society.

By spongebobism 2025-12-0415:372 reply

So the thing about disneyland with the death penalty that attracts you is the death penalty? Geez...

By DANmode 2025-12-0418:29

They’ll put you in Gulags in Disneyland if you make too much noise, too.

That’s how you get Disneyland, as a matter of fact.

If you’ve never figured out why those places have a noticeably different vibe, that’s a big part of it.

Statist-type demographics love Disney, now that I’m thinking about it a bit…

By rayiner 2025-12-0421:581 reply

Singapore was a poor, backward c country within my parents’ lifetime. Harsh punishments is a tool they use to change the culture to make it more amenable to development.

By throwaway2037 2025-12-079:39

Why didn't Taiwan and Korea need the same to become highly developed democratic nations?

By wholinator2 2025-12-0323:262 reply

I'm curious why a million dollars a year? Wouldn't that create its own problems? We don't want anyone chasing Civil servitude for the money right? Enough to live on while still driving your own car and buying your own groceries is, i feel, the right pay balance for congress, lest they detach even further from the lived experience of civilians.

Their finances should be monitored and heavily restricted. No one should think of money as a benefit of civil service

By cogman10 2025-12-040:282 reply

> We don't want anyone chasing Civil servitude for the money right?

That's actually probably the best reason for someone to get involved in civil service. If the salary is lucrative enough, the incentive to stay in office will be high and, importantly, money won't be a factor keeping people from getting into office.

The problems we currently have is:

- Money is an incentive to get into office, but that money comes from interaction with wealthy individuals.

- Nothing stops congress people from leveraging their public actions into lucrative private industry.

- Independently wealthy individuals have a much easier time getting elected than an average citizen.

Think of it this way, if the salary is 0, then you effectively lock out all but the wealthy from office. If the salary is just enough to get by, that still locks out potentially qualified people simply because they can get better jobs out of congress. But if it's a lucrative salary, then you not only make it so people can make it in congress, they can be more competitive against a wealthy competition. They also don't need things like "contributions" to stay afloat. You'd simply be less tempted to take a $10k bribe if it jeopardizes your $1m salary. That alone significantly raises the barrier for bribery.

But we should do that in tandem with cutting off obvious corruption routes. Being a representative should mean you can't work in private industry for 10 years. You should only be allowed to trade 2 ETFs, an all stock and all bond ETF. And the insider trading laws should result in immediate expulsion from congress.

By sopooneo 2025-12-0618:55

I fully agree all your logic. But then I see a counter of "public sentiment" where I bet most citizens would be outraged by million dollar salaries.

By bumby 2025-12-0613:071 reply

You’re saying finding the people most incentivized by money is the feature we should be optimizing for?

If you select those people, what’s to keep them from creating a system that gives them ever more amounts of money, to the detriment of their constituents?

Maybe a better system for selecting civil servants is…I dunno…a system that optimizes for that “service” part? It’s shocking how in the last few decades we’ve convinced ourselves that money is the only filter that motivates people and is the inherent driver of all human action.

By InitialBP 2025-12-0818:121 reply

"If you select those people, what’s to keep them from creating a system that gives them ever more amounts of money, to the detriment of their constituents?"

That is literally the system that exists today, except instead of in the open (e.g. salary) it's through stocks with insider information and who knows how else.

The point isn't to optimize for people who are most incentivized through money, the point is to make the position more accessible for anyone who actually wants to do the "service" part, and to minimize the reasons that it's hard. As the previous commenter pointed out, right now independently wealthy people are some of the only ones who are actually capable of running, and someone who isn't independently wealthy who wins is even more susceptible to bribes because they may be in a tenuous financial position.

I would agree with you that we want individuals who's goal is to do "service" for their society, but our current system obviously isn't working and there are a lot of solid reasons why something like this _could_ improve the situation, what alternatives would you recommend?

By bumby 2025-12-0819:26

>That is literally the system that exists today

Agreed. But the difference is I'm saying a better solution is to adjust the incentives rather than just keeping the same incentives but making it more transparent.

I would be in favor of higher pay for Congress given the limits of the job (maintaining at least two residences in DC and their home state, for example). Perhaps we just disagree on the level. I don't want it to be "lucrative" as you said originally (ie I don't want it to be a way to get rich), but it should be high enough to not be prohibitive to go into service. There are also some knock-on effects that would need to be managed; for example, I think overall civil servant pay is pegged to Congressional pay limits. Other solutions may be to have designated Congressional housing (so at least they can't use the housing cost as an excuse).

By lumost 2025-12-0323:312 reply

There are 100 senators controlling a budget over 4 trillion effecting more than 300 million per year. To be a senator, you must run a 10-100 million dollar political campaign and make friends with every important person in your state.

Anyone capable of doing the above competently can make 10+ million per year in the private sector. Underpaying for these positions simply invites corruption or plutocracy.

By BLKNSLVR 2025-12-0323:49

> To be a senator, you must run a 10-100 million dollar political campaign and make friends with every important person in your state.

Only because that's become the normalised way of 'winning', ironically where society generally loses because being 'friends with every important person in your state' generally means you pander to them in a way that costs everyone else.

Having had that rant, I don't know a better way, and your description is what US politics has (d)evolved to over time; water finding its own level.

By zbentley 2025-12-0323:54

Sounds like we should federally fund campaigns and place strict limits on non-federal campaign funding/PACs/etc.

There's a very thorny line we'd have to draw there re: speech and protection--what's a forbidden PAC and what's a citizen who chooses to use their time and resources to support a candidate they like? I happen to believe that we as a country should trace that line rather than falling back on constitutionally-protected-speech absolutism, but I'm aware that's a minority opinion and unlikely to ever bear fruit.

By renewiltord 2025-12-0323:432 reply

Something that people think will happen if you pay a guy a lot of money is that he will then not try to get more money. In fact, Martha Stewart insider traded for a few hundred k. She's worth half a billion.

A question to ask yourself is "How much money would I have to pay Trump as the President for him to not launch a cryptocoin in his name?"

And a similar question is "If we paid the dockworkers to stay home so that we could containerize, would the guys staying home consider themselves striking when we consider automating?"

There is an answer, and it seems that if you pay a guy who had a large appetite for money a lot of money it doesn't diminish his appetite for more money all that much.

    Once you have paid him the Danegeld
    You never get rid of the Dane

By lesuorac 2025-12-0416:371 reply

Martha Stewart was convicted of obstruction of justice. The securities fraud (inside trading) charge was thrown out by the judge.

It seems entirely reasonable to me that an individual could mis-remember their dealings of ~49k when they're worth billions.

---

> And a similar question is "If we paid the dockworkers to stay home so that we could containerize, would the guys staying home consider themselves striking when we consider automating?"

Alternatively, if we went back to the optimal point of the Laffer tax curve (roughly 75% for top bracket). Then it doesn't need to be the Port of LA paying people to sit at home, it can just be the government providing paid job training and etc so the workers aren't on the streets when they're fired.

By renewiltord 2025-12-0417:541 reply

<edit>You're right. That's a bad example. Here's a better one.</edit> Michael Mindlin was making millions a year when he was convicted over an insider trade he made $60k in. Really, the idea that if you give the bank robbers more money they'll stop robbing has to be this pervasive belief.

By lesuorac 2025-12-0418:161 reply

Michael Mindlin isn't Martha Stewart. Use him in your example next time.

It's like saying you should wear a rain coat because it's 60 degrees outside. And then when I point out they're unrelated you go "it's also raining". No duh wear a raincoat but you didn't say that at the start.

By jacquesm 2025-12-082:041 reply

People use Martha Stewart as an example because she's (1) a household name and (2) a fairly large number of people both inside the USA and outside of it are familiar with the case. Mindlin is much less well known.

By lesuorac 2025-12-0814:39

But when you use person as a reference point and then make additional claims a reader doesn't know (i.e. ~100ks for insider trading) and then the reader looks up the details and finds the person wasn't convicted of insider trading and it was also ~50k the rest of your argument starts to lose support.

I think we can agree that Elon Musk is (1) a household name (2) a fairly large number of people globally know him. However, if you want to make an argument about how to move your legs while running he's not the guy to pick as an example.

Like take the original post and just remove the second sentence about Martha. It still works just fine.

By DANmode 2025-12-0418:31

How much do you have to pay the President so obviously better candidates arrive and spend money and effort to secure the office,

vs present situation of it being a pure liability for financial gain, to seek the office.

By jdasdf 2025-12-048:24

>If you're the elected authority who, by your rule, creates corporate winners and losers

That is the actual problem, and you're not fixing it by stopping them from buying stocks.

By SilverElfin 2025-12-0322:26

Agree. Also we need retroactive clawbacks on these unethical gains they’ve made historically

By TacticalCoder 2025-12-0323:03

[dead]

By cmckn 2025-12-0317:262 reply

In September, there was a bipartisan bill in the House to ban individual stock trading. Members of Congress must divest before being sworn in under this proposal: https://www.npr.org/2025/09/03/nx-s1-5485340/congress-stock-...

I think that one died in committee: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/5106

There’s another from earlier this year (https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1908...) that is currently being pushed by a Republican member from Florida. It was blocked by the Speaker. There’s currently a discharge petition: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolutio...

Over the summer, Josh Hawley of all people introduced a similar bill in the Senate.

By y-curious 2025-12-0318:13

In a shocker to nobody, the people profiting AND making the rules are not ruling against themselves. An annoying system to be sure

By morgan814 2025-12-0321:202 reply

This is why neither party will truly save us. Candidates from both parties seem to mostly focus on social issues (Democrats are 110% preferable here imo). There are very few politicians who speak to the level of corruption and economic inequality we all see.

The way America was designed may have been pretty novel / innovative at the time but we've learned so much since then about how to build better democracies. Switzerland has a council of seven members as their executive branch, not a single person. It's brilliant stuff. I worry that the only way to do better is through an incredibly painful collapse of things. Unless politicians start deciding to write laws that force them to give up power. Which seems almost humorous to suggest.

By foolswisdom 2025-12-0322:39

Why is a council of seven better for the executive branch?

> The way America was designed may have been pretty novel / innovative at the time but we've learned so much since then about how to build better democracies.

Well, a lot of dysfunction in government is the result of later evolution, whether evolution of circumstances or of government.

As an example, the combination of senate filibuster (which was around from the earliest days) with the reconciliation workaround (which is pretty recent) results in omnibus bills, which is a well-known driver of partisanship (because you don't talk to the other party at all in order to pass your bill on the floor), and also has significant consequences to individual responsibility (for the same reason, that omnibus bill must pass for your party to do anything, so you can't be faulted for voting for it, and instead you look for carve outs for your interests. If you do decide to hold up the whole bill like the freedom caucus tried, then you get everyone against you and you will eventually fold).

This also has repercussions that for things that can't go through reconciliations, just because the usual way of doing things involves more party dependence (than it would to pass bills another way). This of course also gives more power to those running the party within the chambers of congress.

My point is that things evolve, and people tend to try to explain the current state of things with reference to the 18th century, and while I definitely believe we should evolve systems to be better, we shouldn't ignore evolution that's already occurred.

By amypetrik8 2025-12-044:00

>Candidates from both parties seem to mostly focus on social issues (Democrats are 110% preferable here imo).

The problem with the democrats - indeed why Trump is in office - is they focus on social issues of "the underdog group" at the exclusion of all else. It's simplistic, arbitrary, and fraught with moral hazards and perverse incentives, often with someone getting screwed over.

I don't care what you call "the underdog group" it is what you think it is. Sex, age, race, citizenship status, disability status, etc. There is a fundamental issue with this sort of things - it reduces humans to simplistic labels and groups and pronounces policy based on group means. The black lesbian woman. The white hetero man. Well... is the white hetero man, is he an orphan and also deaf, meanwhile the black lesbian woman grew up in a wealthy neighborhood and is the epitome of health? But then like a social median dark pattern, this becomes a political dark pattern - identity politics, voter blocs, good guy and bad guy - people get swept up in these bizarre sort of human inherited sin ontology structures which don't really capture the true suffering, or true privilege, that simply exists and varies individual to individual, versus subgroup average to subgroup average.

Any data scientist could tell you if you have 300 features and have free reign to choose subgroups - yea it's going to be easy to find a subgroup that's crushing it and a subgroup that's failing

By Kapura 2025-12-0317:252 reply

Deeply corrupt country we've created here, and it seems impossible to back out of it. How are you gonna get congress to cut their effective pay? I would bet money that there are people who go to congress _solely because_ of the advantages it will give them back in the private sector. If you even got it on a ballot or something where the general populace could vote on it, you can bet your ass that, thanks to citizens united, the pro-owning-stocks lobby would outspend the anti-corruption folks 10 to 1.

I guess the way to start is by shaming these obviously corrupt officials and practices. Much like racism, people don't mind being corrupt but they seem to mind being _called_ corrupt.

By GuinansEyebrows 2025-12-0322:07

> Much like racism, people don't mind being corrupt but they seem to mind being _called_ corrupt.

not to be too pithy, but there's been a pretty major erosion of what most of us probably thought was a relatively safe constant in that regard :(

By ActorNightly 2025-12-0320:178 reply

Philosophically speaking, this is what people want though.

The only reason people make money off of stocks is because at the end, someone gives those companies money. And everyone has a choice to vote with their wallets and through their actions in general.

For example, take Elon and his actions over the past few years. What should have happened is that Tesla sales dropped across the board, and everyone who owns a Tesla should have been in a rush to sell it for fear of it getting scratched or them personally blacklisted from stuff and ridiculed for driving a Tesla. Tesla employees should also have faced the same public pressure and quit.

But people don't care - at the end of the day, politics on Capitol hill is mostly a meme, but what matters is their personal satisfaction. And you look ridiculous if you refuse to get in your coworkers Tesla. So now Elon is a trillionaire.

On the flip side, in a capitalistic sense, it honestly doesn't matter if people are rich, the thing that should matter is what power the money gives them. Rich people buying mansions is a good thing - thats money to workers for construction, staff for housekeeping, and so on. Rich people doing things like being able to buy whole media platforms and censoring things is definitely not good though.

The question is, is society headed in a direction where people have more and more apathy and eventually nothing will matter as things get progressively worse and everyone is just complacent, or is there a bottom line where people start paying attention enough and actually fighting for change when it gets bad enough.

By cortesoft 2025-12-0320:412 reply

> The only reason people make money off of stocks is because at the end, someone gives those companies money. And everyone has a choice to vote with their wallets and through their actions in general.

This ‘voting with your wallet’ argument always ignores the problem of collective action. Even if every individual would prefer the bad companies to not exist (or at least to not behave the way they do), the rational choice is still to purchase products from them if their product is superior and/or cheaper.

Take something like Walmart or Amazon. I think a majority of people dislike the way they do business (the way they treat their employees, the environment, and competitors), but the only choice a consumer has is “shop there and get the cheaper prices, and the company continues to exist like it does” or “don’t shop their, pay more money for things, and the company continues to exist like it does”

Me, as an individual customer, can’t make the company stop existing in its current form. They aren’t going to miss my business. It isn’t even a rounding error on their balance sheet. My only choice is to get the cheaper prices or not.

Even if the company would change if everyone stopped shopping, I don’t get to make that choice. Hell, if everyone else is stopping shopping there and they are going to go out of business, it is STILL in my best interest to shop their while I can and save the money… it isn’t like my business is going to SAVE them any more than it will kill them.

You can’t kill a business practice by voting with your wallet.

The only time consumer choice will work is when the individual consumer has a better alternative; if I get a better PERSONAL experience (either cheaper or a better product) by shopping somewhere else, then voting with your wallet makes sense and will work (because everyone will have the same incentive). Companies won’t be punished for their external costs by their customers, since the customers aren’t choosing to suffer those costs or not; they suffer the external costs no matter what, they only can choose to enjoy the benefits or not. Why suffer the external costs AND not even get to enjoy the benefits?

This is why change has to come from some binding collective action (like legislation or regulation or something), not individual consumer choice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem

By ActorNightly 2025-12-0418:46

You are correct in the sense that a single person can't change anything, but the issue is a level deeper. The thing is, even if you dislike a company and don't use it, you aren't willing to bully people who do use it.

If as a society, we were more willing to police ourselves, you would see real change. In the end, acceptance of peers is the number one fundamental drive for a lot of people past basic needs.

By bumby 2025-12-0320:501 reply

>The only reason people make money off of stocks is because at the end, someone gives those companies money.

Small quibble. The reason why people make money off stocks is largely because people think people will give those companies in the future. People aren’t just trading on dividends, they’re trading on PE ratios.

Otherwise, companies like Tesla would be worth much less than Toyota (which gets more revenue, higher gross profit, and higher profit margins).

By ActorNightly 2025-12-0418:381 reply

True, but a company has to be shown to actually make things that people want. If Tesla didn't sell cars or sold very little, they won't be hyped up as much as they are now.

By bumby 2025-12-052:33

I think if you look at the numbers, it doesn’t make sense. For Toyota to have a similar market cap at their current PE, they would need to sell something like 95% of the total cars worldwide. So unless people think Tesla will have a worldwide automotive monopoly, they are paying for something other than what they’re doing with cars.

By yieldcrv 2025-12-0320:531 reply

Tesla has the best charging network - which you don't need a Tesla to access - and all other charging networks seem to be poorly incentivized by not having their own cars that they need to improve the user experience for, as those network's chargers are broken and poorly maintained

Tesla becomes a power and taxi company, diversified away from the car sales

By ActorNightly 2025-12-0418:391 reply

Thanks for proving my point to the letter.

By yieldcrv 2025-12-051:52

It wasn’t a rebuttal so you’re welcome?

I think what’s really a meme is the idea that withholding payment is the defacto way of creating accountability towards a stakeholder that you don’t like, since its not and also doesn't work

Its goofy and cringe that the left has made that their whole identity, only to spend half of their adult life slowly noticing it doesn't work while isolating their prior friends that dont participate in the process

By MisterTea 2025-12-0321:29

> or is there a bottom line where people start paying attention enough and actually fighting for change when it gets bad enough.

As long as the majority of people are comfortable while being apathetic they will not care. They will happily maintain that status quo. When things get uncomfortable for the majority, then will there be action. Just make sure the people are fed and entertained just enough and you're safe.

By kelnos 2025-12-0322:50

> For example, take Elon and his actions over the past few years. What should have happened is that Tesla sales dropped across the board, and everyone who owns a Tesla should have been in a rush to sell it for fear of it getting scratched or them personally blacklisted from stuff and ridiculed for driving a Tesla.

I think you overestimate the number of people who make principled stands on their product buying decisions based on the actions of company executives. I don't think that's the same thing has "people don't care"; I think some people just don't think they should compromise on their needs/wants for what they see as unrelated reasons.

> Tesla employees should also have faced the same public pressure and quit.

In an ideal world, sure. But we live in a country where health insurance is tied to employment and employers, and it's not exactly a wonderful market for job-seekers these days. I expect there were many people at Tesla who were unhappy with Musk and wanted to leave, but felt that the risks of doing so were too high. Again, this is not the same as "people don't care".

> And you look ridiculous if you refuse to get in your coworkers Tesla.

As you should. Making a fuss over this sort of thing when you're all trying to get to an offsite business meeting, or just a group lunch, is eye-rollingly immature.

I fundamentally disagree with your assertion that people are apathetic and don't care. Like with many things, the situation is more complicated than that, and people have to weigh their needs and (personal, financial, etc.) security against whatever principles they may have. On top of that, there are so many things that we "need" to care about and consider, that if we tried to actually take everyone's pet outrage into account, we'd literally do nothing.

And some people don't think it's necessary to group people's politics or general malfeasance with their "art". (E.g., should people stop watching and enjoying movies produced, written, or directed by convicted sexual harassers or abusers? Maybe? But that's an individual decision, and I don't think there's a right or wrong answer there.)

I think there's also an aspect of "who's the loudest shithead today?" going on too. Musk seems like a truly reprehensible person, and I wouldn't buy a Tesla. But what about GM's leadership? What about the history of some German car makers supporting the Nazis back in the 1930s and 40s? Musk is loud about his shittiness, but others are quieter and sometimes their misdeeds go farther in the past.

By carlCarlCarlCar 2025-12-0321:13

You're conflating "what people want" with "only choice"

If you look at polling this is not what the majority want

Since much of this truth is merely rhetorical, socialized truth, not immutable physics, the fix is to propagate a new narrative about how the economy works, how politics work, and threaten the elders the way they threaten the youth. They are older and weaker naturally. End the one sided ageism

By eatsyourtacos 2025-12-0320:301 reply

>Philosophically speaking, this is what people want though

No- it's what the rich and powerful want and they have forced their ways on everyone because there's nothing we can do to stop it.

By kelipso 2025-12-0320:441 reply

Right. Under a dictatorship, you wouldn’t just say philosophy speaking this is what people want because if they didn’t, they would revolt.

By akoboldfrying 2025-12-0321:201 reply

You have a point, but I think the situation can be framed as a question of "what people want" by modelling the decision better. (People under a dictator sometimes do revolt, but often don't.)

The choice people have is not between a dictator and no dictator, it's between a dictator and a period of instability and chaos, possibly including bloody fighting or even famine, the outcome of which is (a) completely uncertain even in the unlikely event that you know that ~everyone wants the dictator gone and (b) might be that the dictator's forces still come out on top, or that someone even worse is installed into power.