The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain are explained in the context of an exit-voice framework presuming rational actors. It is shown that the prohibition of exit by establishing what we call “political costs of individual mobility” was a conditio sine qua non for the effective suppression of internal political opposition in Eastern Europe, and in East Germany in particular. The analysis of the costs of emigration and of political protest as instruments of autocratic rule (mobility politics) leads to interesting and surprising implications as to the general stability of dictatorial regimes.
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