NOTE: this is a slightly updated repost of a guide I wrote in 10000 Islands's forums.

How do I improve my Economy? This might be one of the most frequently asked questions by new players of NationStates (behind "Can you go to war with other nations?").

Because of the way NationStates calculates stats upon creating your nation, it is fundamentally impossible to start your nation with a(n almost) perfect Economy. I have not researched this in detail, but personally the highest starting Economy I got during unrelated tests was slightly above 80. Regardless, it is clear to me that the imperfect economies of new nations is fully intentional. No matter what you do, you will have to grow your Economy for it to become particularly powerful.

Depending on your choices during the create-a-nation questionnaire, your starting Economy value may range from 1 to ~80. I will cover this in more detail below.

Essentially, there are two main, independent ways to improve the Economy stat. They are both related to two other NS stats: Economic Freedom and Business Subsidization. Economic Freedom and Business Subsidization are almost completely independent from one another, allowing you to freely choose which path to take to improve your Economy or to combine both at will.

Economic Freedom
As one of 3 NationStates' Freedoms, Economic Freedom is a very important stat. For one, it partially determines your WA classification, as explained in this wonderful Dispatch here (not an official 10000 Islands Dispatch). But Economic Freedom is directly related to your Economy as well. The more Economic Freedom, the better your Economy stat, conversely, reducing your Economic Freedom will harm your Economy.

Just as you would expect, Economic Freedom is related to the amount of freedom businesses have to operate, as well as the freedom of individual citizens to take part in economic activity any way they desire. To improve Economic Freedom, you should support big businesses, enterpreneurs, and fair competition (so allowing business monopolies will actually lower Economic Freedom). In particular, CEOs tend to suggest options that improve Economic Freedom.

Economy-wise, nations in NationStates are divided in two large groups: Capitalist nations and Socialist nations. Mechanically speaking, the only difference between the two types is that Socialist nations have an artificial -100 added to their Economic Freedom. Hence, Capitalist nations have an Economic Freedom between 0 and 100, and Socialist nations have an Economic Freedom in the range of -100 to 0. This extra -100 is not considered when calculating other stats, as far as I know.

The above implies that the type of nation you are running, Capitalist or Socialist, is actually irrelevant when trying to improve your Economy. A Capitalist nation with an Economic Freedom of 50 is functionally identical to a Socialist nation with an Economic Freedom of -50. A Capitalist nation with an Economic Freedom of 25 is functionally identical to a Socialist nation with an Economic Freedom of -75. And so on.

At least two stats (other than Economy itself) depend prominently on Economic Freedom: Wealth Gaps and Crime. Essentially, more Economic Freedom implies larger Wealth Gaps and a higher Crime rate. The latter is very easy to address, but the former is not (without reducing Economic Freedom). Take this into account to decide how much Economic Freedom you want in your nation.

A little known fact is that Economic Freedom begins to hurt your Economy when it is extremely high. The exact threshold value is 80.00 for capitalist nations, and thus -20.00 for socialist nations. These are the optimal Economic Freedom values that guarantee the highest Economy (fun fact: starting with Capitalist or Libertarian freedoms guarantees that your nation will start at the optimal 80.00 Economic Freedom).

Finally, Economic Freedom largely determines your initial Economy value. Your starting Economic Freedom will range from -99 to 97. Except for very high Economic Freedoms (i.e. past the point where Economic Freedom begins to reduce Economy), the following formulas serve as a good rule of thumb:

Economy = Economic Freedom (if your nation is Capitalist)
Economy = Economic Freedom + 100 (if your nation is Socialist, per the above equivalence rule)

This only holds true if you don't answer any questions in the create-a-nation questionnaire, and only for a nation's first few days. Once you start answering issues, your nation will quickly deviate from these formulas.

Business Subsidization
Business Subsidization is a generally more overlooked stat than Economic Freedom and has a more complex behaviour. Most importantly, it has a more dramatic effect on the Economy than Economic Freedom.

Essentially, Business Subsidization measures the value of subsidies given to your nation's industries. Options that boost Business Subsidization often mention explicitly giving subsidies or money to a particular economic sector.

The effect of Business Subsidization is more complicated than that of Economic Freedom. For one, because it requires a certain level of Business Subsidization before the Economy begins to grow. This means that you will probably need to answer a few issues in a pro-subsidy manner before noticing any effect on the Economy whatsoever. However, the Economy boost it ends up giving is much more substantial than Economic Freedom, which will result in your Economy growing faster.

You can consider Business Subsidization as extra "bonus Economy points", as follows:

Economy = Effect of Economic Freedom + Bonus Points (minimum 0) + Other effects

Why? Because reducing Business Subsidization does not always harm your Economy. It only reduces your Economy if you had any such "bonus points". Reducing the Business Subsidization that was responsible for these "bonus points" will logically remove them and subsequently lower your Economy stat. This also means that, if you had a large number of "bonus points" (as most socialist-oriented nations are), reducing Business Subsidization can be catastrophic.

A stat (other than Economy) that depends on Business Subsidization is Taxation (after all, this money needs to come from somewhere!), and as such Freedom from Taxation and Disposable Income will be affected too. The more subsidies you give, the more Taxation will rise, and the more Freedom From Taxation and Disposable Income will be reduced. Taxation can grow to ridiculous levels and it is hard to keep down, so take it into account before beginning to subsidize anything in sight.

More Business Subsidization never has a negative effect on Economy.

Growth Thresholds
There is a pretty abrupt and noticeable threshold once your Economy hits a value of 96. Past this value, it becomes very stable and it is difficult to improve or harm further. This applies as long as your Economy is above 96, independently of your nation's other stats. A second threshold with even more extreme stability occurs when your Economy hits a value of 100.

Final comments
Some issues improve Business Subsidization while reducing Economic Freedom, and vice versa. In such case, both effects will partially cancel each other out, with Economy moving according to the result. For example, if the Business Subsidization boost grows your Economy by 2 while the Economic Freedom reduction decreases your Economy by 1, the result of the issue is that Economy will grow by 1.

For flavor reasons, Economic Freedom is generally preferred for Capitalist nations and Business Subsidization for Socialist nations. Per the equivalence rule, both work equally well for either type of nation.

Years ago, NationStates used a different create-a-nation questionnaire that was widely researched, allowing players to easily start any nation with any nation type they desired.

The new system hasn't been nearly as widely researched as the previous one, presumably because it includes a new "Random" option that can be mashed until it outputs the desired stats from the beginning. This is an effective, if admittedly tedious, way to easily start any nation with the desired WA classification.

Fortunately, it is still possible to obtain any such classification by simply selecting one of the 9 starting freedoms and answering the 8 questions in the first page. More variation can be added with the 9 history options, but they are not really required to obtain any specific classification and as such will be omitted from this guide.

This guide is based on a forum post I made that is over one year old now, but it will probably get more exposure (and better formatting and detail) through a dispatch. The original post also forgot a category: Liberal Democratic Socialists.

The underlying mechanics are very complex, as is the case for anything directly related to NS stats. Furthermore, due to how the questionnaire works, it is possible to obtain a WA classification through multiple paths. The one considered for this guidelist is the most simple I discovered.

The 9 starting freedoms
These are the 9 starting freedoms available. The resulting freedom stats are shown in this list, without replying to any question. They are ordered as shown in the create-a-nation page:

Remember that negative Economic Freedom values imply a socialist state-planned economy.

*Not to be confused with Economy!

The 8 questions

• Q1. A country should be judged by how it treats its worst-off citizens.

• Q2. Corporations are good for society.

• Q3. Marijuana should be legal.

• Q4. The world needs to rediscover its spirituality.

• Q5. Young people should perform a year's compulsory military service.

• Q6. Capitalism is on the way out.

• Q7. Without democracy, a country has nothing

• Q8. It's better to deter criminals than rehabilitate them.

These questions modify the stats preselected through the 10 freedom choices (9 + Random) by a variable amount, that depends on the base stats of your nation-to-be. Not all of them affect the freedoms used to determine the WA classification, and as such will be omitted below.

How to start with the WA classification you want
This table indicates how to start with any WA classification. The listed method is the most simple I have discovered. Freedom indicates which of the 9 Freedoms (see above) you should select, while questions indicate how to answer each one. Questions not explicitly mentioned should be left blank. If two Freedoms are shown, both are valid options that will result in the same WA classification.

WA categories are in alphabetical order.

*To obtain a Mother Knows Best State, follow the steps for a Father Knows Best State, but on the second page of the nation creation questionnaire select either "Matriarchy" or "Queendom" as the nation pre-title.

Throughoutly tested the 31st of January 2019, updated 11th of April 2020, and still valid as of 2024. With a bit of experience, the questionnaire is quite intuitive and it is easy to recognize the pattern I used to get every possible type from the start.

There is not an agreed definition of "totalitarianism". For the purposes of this guide, a totalitarian state is defined as an authoritarian state led by an all-encompassing ideology that actively seeks to exert control over every single aspect of life. Much like the definition, there is not an agreed "list" of totalitarian systems; there are very obvious cases (China, North Korea, Eritrea) and others that are more in a grey area and might or might not be considered totalitarian depending on the exact definition and its interpretation (Venezuela, Iran, Belarus).

Disclaimer: I have not read books like The Communist Manifesto or Mein Kampf. Instead, this guide is based almost exclusively on overall analysis on present or recent totalitarian states. Some further updates from 2022 onwards may indirectly draw from The Art of Political Control in China by Daniel Mattingly. Many of the nations referenced are Communist or former Communist states, as Communism has been, by far, the most successful totalitarian system in history. In particular, the People's Republic of China (from here onward referred to as PRC) is probably the most advanced model of 21st century technological totalitarianism, and for this reason it will appear frequently in this guide.

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The Political System
Ideology

Communist propaganda in Vietnam, as seen in NS banners. Disclaimer: this image contains symbolism prohibited by law in some nations (at the time of writing: Georgia, Hungary, Indonesia, Latvia, Lithuania, South Korea and Ukraine)

However, there are still a number of restrictions. In any case, to justify the oppressive political system, there must be a goal. In fact, there can be several - Nazi Germany had, for example, the following goals: Lebensraum and "solving" the Jewish Question. Furthermore, this implied a set of subgoals, most notably Axis victory in World War II. Another very common goal is "building" Communism. In this case, each of the steps towards the Communist ideal society can be considered a subgoal.

Goals do not need to be very explicit, but there must be one that provides the regime's legitimacy. It can be as simple as total self-reliance and eventual military victory over a hostile neighbour (main goal of Eritrea, at least until 2018, and also subgoals for North Korea) or obeying the word of God (Saudi Arabia, Iran).

However, to preserve the legitimacy of the totalitarian state forever (if possible), the goal can never be fully achieved. The goal can be, for example, a continuous task with no end by definition, as happens with theocratic totalitarianisms. Or, the state may claim again and again that the goal has not been achieved yet, and scapegoat dissidents ("fifth columns") and foreign powers. A typical example is Communism. Communism seeks to eventually do away with the state... but to achieve this goal, the state must be strengthened to get everyone involved and in line. One can easily conclude from this obvious contradiction that, in fact, the state will never wither away under Communist rule - doing so is directly against the political system that the USSR and its satellite states built. The Communist ideal society can not and will not be built - to the sole benefit of the ruling elite.

Furthermore, the ideology must give as many answers and leave as little details of daily life unregulated as possible. Communism, Nazism, Chavismo and theocratic regimes do a very good job at this, having a very clear set of rules that plan how society as a whole and every individual should behave and intruding into such personal matters such as reproduction, religion and choice of job. In effect, each of these ideologies have an inherent, de facto, code of morality within.

In conclusion, every totalitarian state must have an ideology that guides daily life as much as possible, and that sets a goal that can never be fulfilled. Within this basic restrictions, you can get as far as your imagination allows. If possible, though, tie the state's ideology to the nation's historical and cultural context for extra realism (for an example, read the introduction of the Constitution of the PRC).

Monopolizing power
The first thing that comes into mind when thinking about totalitarian regimes are one-party states. However, while many one-party states are indeed totalitarian, a regime can be totalitarian without being a one-party state. Yet, in any case, to build a successful totalitarian state, political power must be fully monopolized. Here are some ways to do so.

1. Puppet parties

Turkmenistan's Mejlis, 2018

Explaining in detail the Turkmen electoral and political system might warrant a Dispatch of its own. However, the key point to be raised here is that, while in theory the opposition controls 70 of the 125 seats, there is no genuine opposition whatsoever. All legal "opposition" parties in Turkmenistan have been created by former President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow and, needless to say, never oppose government policies. Despite the DPT commanding a minority of seats, the lack of political pluralism is extremely transparent to the informed observer. Furthermore, 48 independents seat on the Mejilis, and as expected from a totalitarian state, they are all progovernment. The use of progovernment independents may, again, need another full guide, but the concept is applied to different degrees by some authoritarian regimes (the best example is Belarus) and several Communist states.

The PRC, North Korea and several Eastern Bloc states also have theoretical multi-party systems, but they all had/have a privileged "vanguard party" recognized in the Constitution and operate more like true one-party states. In North Korea, all political parties form a single progovernment coalition.

2. Absolute ruler

Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki, 2002

Eritrea is a special case. Under the country's de facto perpetual martial law, Eritrea's Constitution was never implemented - not only Eritrea is a one-party state, but it also has no functioning legislature whatsoever, so in practice the country is openly ruled entirely by the executive (see below). From independence until 2018, legitimacy was provided through the threat of Ethiopian military aggression, and afterwards through the perceived stability threat that the nearby Tigray War represents. The People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFJD), the country's sole political party, groups the political elite.

3. Unelected institutions

Iran's political system is complex, but it is carefully designed to deny elected governments any real power. The Supreme Leader has no fixed term and it is appointed by the popularly elected Assembly of Experts. The Supreme Leader then appoints the head of the judiciary and six members of the Council of Guardians; the other six members of the Council of Guardians are nominated by the head of the judiciary and confirmed by parliament. The Guardian Council must approve all candidates for elections and all laws before they are passed. So, looking carefully...

• The Supreme Leader controls the powerful Guardian Council, as he elects six members and the other six are nominated by the head of the judiciary - who is in turn appointed by the Supreme Leader.

• The Guardian Council, subservient to the Supreme Leader, blocks all unapproved candidates from elections and must approve all laws for them to take effect, subverting what otherwise seems a semidemocratic system.

• While competition between hard-line and reformist candidates is genuine, in practice all allowed candidates are loyal to the Supreme Leader, and furthermore absolutely powerless. If any law challenges the regime, it will be blocked by the Guardian Council.

• The Assembly of Experts is meaningless, as candidates are elected under a system where only those who are loyal to the Supreme Leader may stand for election.

Venezuela's system is shaky compared to that of Iran, but follows the same basic principle. After the opposition won legislative elections, Maduro supplanted the opposition-controlled National Assembly by creating a fully loyal National Constituent Assembly. Theoretically tasked with writing a new Constitution, in practice the National Constituent Assembly carried the functions of the elected parliament, making the opposition's majority in the latter worthless until its mandate expired. Afterwards, the Venezuelan regime just rigged the next elections to the National Assembly to regain control of it, using blatant electoral fraud amid an opposition boycott.

4. One-party states

Emblem of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Disclaimer: this image contains symbolism prohibited by law in some nations (at the time of writing: Georgia, Hungary, Indonesia, Latvia, Lithuania, South Korea and Ukraine)

Ruling from the executive
Needless to say, totalitarian regimes must feature no separation of powers at all - that is, the country must be ruled entirely from the executive, with different degrees of power concentration in the leader's hands: from absolute (North Korea, Stalinist USSR, Nazi Germany, Turkmenistan, Eritrea) to mild (Vietnam, Laos, the PRC immediately prior to Xi Jinping). In the latter case, the party's ruling elite is supreme.

Regardless, totalitarian states often need a way to create a legislature that is theoretically the highest organ of power, but in practice powerless (Communist states are particularly good at this). Here are some of the more common techniques. Keep in mind that some states apply more than one at the same time:

1. Replacement by another organ
Enter the Politburo, a staple of Communist regimes, modern ones included. This small body carries out legislative functions during most of the year, and parliament then only meets twice for ordinary sessions. At its core, the Politburo is fully intended to shift as much power away from the legislature as possible, by concentrating power in hands of a small group of people - invariably members of the ruling elite. In fact, by declaring the parliament the "highest organ of state power" (as for example in Cuba or the USSR), all power is vested on the Politburo (since it has the same powers), skipping the formal government as well.

Turkmenistan, at several points of its post-independence history, has also applied the same idea through the People's Council, an enormous body comprised of the president, members of parliament, regional officials and others. The People's Council is directly designated as the highest representative body, and by including the parliament alongside all kinds of government-controlled officials, it dilutes legislative powers to the point that it effectively acts as a mere rubber-stamp.

Then again, Venezuela took the idea of a "replacement by another organ" literally by supplanting the elected parliament with a loyal body that carries out its functions.

2. Parallel party-state structures
Much like the Politburo, this concept was pioneered by Communist states, especially the USSR, and it is often combined with the replacement organ tactic. The idea of a parallel party-state structure (where the party must be dominant) is actually pretty simple: party organs take all decisions behind the scenes, and are then rushed through the formal government to get rubber-stamp approval. Effectively, this relegates the formal government to a small role and shifts all power to the ruling elite. Of course, for this to work, formal government channels must also be under firm control - but they should be regardless if any of the methods of monopolizing power is applied.

3. No elected legislature
The easiest way of keeping the legislature meaningless is... not having a legislature in the first place! Either literally (Eritrea's parliament has not met since 2002 at the time of writing) or by having an advisory parliament or one that is appointed entirely by the executive, as in many absolute monarchies. Again, this method is so transparent for both domestic and international observers that it needs a very strong source of legitimacy.

4. Unelected institutions
In more "open" totalitarian states, the very same unelected institutions designed to keep elected governments under control will, by definition, concentrate all power in the executive, as the legislature is generally an elected institution. As seen above, Iran's elected parliament is stacked with loyalists, but also the executive (the Supreme Leader) is entitled to block any and all legislation coming from it through the Guardian Council.

Social control
A totalitarian state aims to be invulnerable to any and all internal challenge. Not only the political system must be throughoutly controlled, but also every detail of society, in accordance to the state's ideology. Of course, this is no easy task, and requires a carefully built repressive apparatus willing to and capable of crushing any and all dissent.

Basics
1. Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is absolutely key to the building of a strong, centralized state. Proof of this is that, throughout history, many succesful empires are known for building powerful, efficient bureaucracies. Bureaucracies serve three main purposes: implementing decisions taken by the centralized leadership in a top-down manner, rewarding loyal citizens with access to well-paid civil service jobs, and direct social control. Indeed, no other method of social control has ever been as effective as the one pioneered by the USSR, which has been further perfected by the PRC in the modern era.

An enormous, all-encompassing bureaucracy allows for deep state interference in almost everything imaginable. For example, just to travel around the USSR, Soviet citizens needed an internal passport, work book, housing papers, medical documentation, records of military service, special documents for travel to border regions, vacation passes, and written travel authorizations. During the Cold War era, to marry or divorce in the PRC, citizens required approval from a communist party secretary appointed at their workplace.

In sum, the basic concept of bureaucratic social control is introducing government-controlled processes ("paperwork") needed to complete as many life decisions as possible, such as travelling or marrying in the examples above, to get or leave a job or any educational institution, and so on.

The need for constant bureaucratic approval, which can be easily arbitrarily denied, leaves citizens at the mercy of the state. Bureaucracy greatly simplifies and amplifies repressive tactics in many ways. For example, having your ethnicity explicitly shown in official documents (as in the USSR) makes discrimination so much easier and much less explicit at the same time. Bureaucracy can also be given oversight over publications so that unwanted content is easily censored.

The PRC has perfected this system in the modern era by introducing technology into the mix. The state's reach can be expanded exponentially simply through digitalization. Nowadays, police in Xinjiang use a special app that records every detail of the lives of Muslim minorities living there - police can then send the information to their superiors if anything mildly "suspicious" is found, such as higher-than-usual electricity consumption. Likewise, the infamous Great Firewall is much more effective at automatically removing sensitive material on highly specific grounds than Soviet bureaucracy ever was.

The downside of this overall model is that it provides many opportunities for corruption, especially given the absence of any independent oversight. In turn, corruption reduces the state's ability to implement policies and impose social controls through bureaucracy. A totalitarian regime then faces the dilemma of combating corruption without creating an independent organization that could be a challenge to its power (the PRC tries to do this through aggressive monitoring of its civil servants). Alternatively, corruption itself can be used directly as a method of social control.

2. Corruption
Corruption is a very overlooked form of social and political control. Often shown as a hindrance that weakens the state's economic performance and the legitimacy of the regime, in practice it can be a very effective pseudo-repressive method, at the obvious expense of the population's life standards. Corruption can steer resources to reward a loyal elite or be used as a weapon to purge undesirable officials.

Turkmenistan is hardly an advanced totalitarian state, yet this Central Asian kleptocracy really showcases corruption's entire potential. The Turkmen leadership allows, encourages, and requires officials to take bribes. Corruption makes money flow from citizens to officials, from officials to their superiors, and finally to the ruling predatory elite (which, needless to say, is de facto protected from prosecution). Regular purges and corruption reinforce one another in Turkmenistan: officials are easily fired and jailed on corruption charges the second they fall out of favor, while regular shuffles increase official corruption, because bureaucrats and local leaders try to make as much money as possible during what they know is going to be a short stay in their positions.

The PRC has also weaponized corruption in a different manner. The PRC has roughly 60 million bureaucrats (more than the entire population of South Korea!), but lacks the financial resources that a developed country would have to pay their salaries. As a result, Chinese bureaucrats receive meager wages that are supplemented by bribery and forms of transactional corruption. The PRC intentionally tolerates this kind of corruption, all while cracking down on any non-transactional corruption that hurts the state's economy and the CCP's grip on power.

3. Brute force

Many modern, advanced totalitarian states show some restraint when it comes to brute force; state terror instead comes mostly from sheer intimidation and coercion. An event like the Tiananmen Square Protests in the PRC is an embarassment to the state, and an obvious sign that all other methods of stability maintenance have failed.

There are three big issues with violent repression. First, security forces or the military should not grow powerful enough to overthrow the government, especially a civilian one. Second, violent repression can easily trigger popular backlash, civil disobedience and other forms of resistance. Third, violent repression is extremely resource-inefficient, requiring enormous manpower to enforce order and ensure compliance. This is why most authoritarian states reserve use of the military exclusively to supress full-blown revolutions (i.e. when the state's repressive apparatus has already failed).

Regardless, some totalitarian states continue to use violence as a key form of social control, often in more creative ways than just "shoot protesters". Eritrea ties all its able-bodied citizens to compulsory, indefinite military service, which in practice is intended to transform the country into a gigantic slave labor force. In Cuba, so-called "acts of repudiation" (supposedly spontaneous mob attacks against dissidents) regularly intimidate the regime's critics. In Venezuela, "neighborhood collectives" (colectivos) are, in practice, gangs of armed civilians that frequently use brutal violence to advance the interests of Nicolas Maduro's dictatorship.

And, in any case, the police force is likely to be a central piece in the state's social control mechanisms, as it is dispersed all over the country and has specialized equipment (for example, riot gear and surveillance tools) to deal with smaller disturbances or individual dissenters. This can be either through direct arrest or more subtle pressure methods, such as shutting off electricity or faking a bomb threat in a building where an opposition movement is set to gather.

4. Classifying your citizens
Classifying your citizens is another very effective form of intimidation, as effectively signals a group of citizens (those who oppose the government) for abuse.

North Korea might be the most extreme example of this. The country is infamous for classifying its citizens in a semihereditary caste-like system, the songbun. Songbun marks the educational opportunities of North Korean citizens, whether they are able to join the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) or even if they are able to access certain stores. As reported by the UN in its Commission of Inquiry, the North Korean government keeps cross-referenced information files about each citizen past the age of majority as part of the songbun, detailing the citizen's genealogy and biographical information, skills and talents, aspirations and ambitions, health status, and perceived loyalty to the regime. These files are checked every time a citizen tries to enter university, moves jobs, asks for a promotion or is accused of a crime, to decide the treatment he or she should receive.

Other Communist states, following the model of the USSR, implemented a different form of classifying their citizens: the internal passport. Similar to North Korea's information files (which were probably inspired by it), this passport contained information such as the holder's ethnicity, social background, past jobs and why they were left, and any problems with the law. A single mistake, political or not, effectively left a black mark in your internal passport that followed you forever.

Again, the PRC has digitalized Soviet methods of repression to take them to new levels. The PRC is constantly collecting enormous amounts of private information about its citizens, that are then automatically stored in government databases and retrieved when necessary.

5. Surveillance
Surveillance is key for social control in any authoritarian system. The scope, exact methods, and technological capacity varies from state to state, and a fair deal of creativity is possible. Ultimately, the only condition is that the state must be informed about the basic activities and, if possible, the political orientation of each citizen.

Nothing says mass surveillance state like the PRC's nationwide system of surveillance cameras with facial recognition technology that are placed just about everywhere. The PRC has also gone as far as to monitor children's brain activity in schools to check their attention in political indoctrination classes. While no state can match the PRC's capabilities and willingness to absolutely control every citizen, electronic surveillance of communications is widespread in all but the world's poorest dictatorships. Even in Cuba, famous for its slow and expensive internet, it is common for emails to arrive censored or with the attachments removed.

Another whole kettle of fish is the use of informers. This technique can take many different forms and it is widespread in countries such as North Korea and Turkmenistan. In the latter, the total lack of independent information means that most of the population relies on gossip by informed elders to get any news - gossip which is collected by the security services and stored. Informers can be organized as committees at the neighbourhood level, each in charge of a particular building, as in the USSR, North Korea or Karimov's Uzbekistan.

Economic Control
It should go without saying that the total control of a totalitarian state must extend to the economy as well. The problem is that such a tight grip is a hindrance to economic development. Do not expect your nation under totalitarian rule to have very high living standards, at least not for most people, though a totalitarian state is not necessarily dirt-poor. However, some degree of well-being must exist if you do not want the population to rebel.

1. Planned Command Economy
As obsolete as it is, a planned economy with no private enterprise whatsoever represents the highest degree of economic control possible. Under a planned economy, the state decides what every citizen will earn, what products will be available and at what price, if vacations are allowed... through state power over availability and production of goods, prices, salaries and the labor market. Totalitarianism and a lack of private enterprise are hence ideal partners.

However, do expect the state's economic performance to be weak, partly due to the economic calculation problem. Time after time nations with Norway-level living standards and planned command economies pop up in NationStates, but this is completely unrealistic. While the benefits of a planned economy can not be denied (enormous but only short-term improvement, unusually high levels of income equality, significantly better life standards than similar low-middle income nations, macroeconomic stability) constant misallocation of resources prevents economic development in the long run, and the market value of such an economy fluctuates wildly. Under such an economy, stagnant growth and shortages are often routine, but can be turned into an advantage if the state is totalitarian - shortages provide new forms of control (for example, withholding food from key populations, as in Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s). Similarly, rationing is not necessarily a failure for a totalitarian state, and may even be implemented where it is not needed for purely economic reasons. While it does noticeably weaken popular opinion on the regime (which must be taken into account) it is essentially another layer of control over the population, as they depend on the state to get rationed goods.

Stepping into PMT territory, AI might help (but will not fully solve) with the economic calculation problem, but this requires enormous amounts of information about the population, which in a democratic society is prone to abuse, whereas in a totalitarian one political motives and infighting will eventually take precedence over the AI. So, overall, in any case, expect your command economy to be extremely inefficient, and unless your nation has vast amounts of valuable resources (oil, unobtainium) and a relatively small population (<10 million) do not expect it to be wealthy.

2. Market Socialism

Shanghai skyline, as seen in NS banners

"Market socialism" here refers to the economic system pioneered by the PRC and also used in Vietnam and Laos. Essentially, it aims to achieve a certain degree of effectiveness by allowing private enterprise, all while keeping the state's control over the economy.

Market socialism is unsurprisingly most effective and advanced in the PRC. For political reasons, the public sector still comprises a significant percentage (~40% at the time of writing) of its economy, but most importantly, the line between public and private enterprise is completely blurred. Aside from state ownership, public companies behave like private ones at all effects. Meanwhile, most major private companies are openly "encouraged" to have branches of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) within them (as is the case with Alibaba, Weibo, Jingdong, Baidu, Sohu, Qihoo 360 and LeTV), and many CEOs are card-holding CCP members themselves. In general, even without an internal CCP branch, major private companies must be politically pliant and comply with censorship orders and "common prosperity" demands (among others), or otherwise risk serious consequences (enormous fines, negative propaganda, arrest and imprisonment of key personnel). In exchange, such companies regularly receive generous subsidies and other forms of government support as a gesture of good will from the authorities. Hence, political loyalty is effectively a precondition for commercial success in the PRC. Unlike the USSR, the PRC has also invested a lot in technology, knowing that, aside from the economic benefit (and avoiding disastrous technological lag), there is a political one: the new technology can then be applied to surveillance and integrated into the repressive apparatus. Ever wondered why Chinese mobile phones have advanced facial recognition technology?

Then again, the PRC has an advantage that no other state has: the largest internal market in the world, consisting of a moderately wealthy population of 1.4 billion people. International companies are much more willing to comply with the PRC's political demands because, else, they will be blocked from accessing >18% of the world's population. This will not work in a state like Vietnam, but otherwise, the basics of market socialism still apply and do allow for considerable economic growth. Widespread corruption, lack of transparency and the precedence of political motives over economic ones often drag down socialist market economies; regardless, the model is substantially more effective than any command economy ever was and will allow for a moderately wealthy nation, especially if valuable natural resources are involved.

3. Kleptocracy
Finally, there is the option of concentrating all wealth in hands of the ruling elite. Many modern authoritarian states like Russia or Saudi Arabia have large state-owned sectors, and a private sector almost entirely dominated by the ruling elite.

In extreme cases, like Turkmenistan, a kleptocracy develops (other examples: Tajikistan, Equatorial Guinea). Commonly, as in Turkmenistan and Saudi Arabia, the ruling elite that dominates private enterprise is the leader's family. In kleptocracies, nepotism and the plundering of state resources are rampant. Needless to say, this is not a very efficient economic model. In fact, it creates extreme inequality and keeps most of the population poor. It works in Turkmenistan because of widespread political apathy. In the PRC, where the population is more politically aware for cultural, political and economic reasons, this model would not last long.

Having vast amounts of a particular resource favors the development of a kleptocracy. For one, it allows for some wealth to seep into the population and moderate short-term economic growth, and also large state revenues for the elites to embezzle. Most kleptocracies in the world thus develop in oil-rich countries, where the economy is barely diversified at all and rather depends on exporting a single product. In Turkmenistan, such product is natural gas. Obviously, with an economy so heavily dependent on a single export, long-term stability is impossible, but rather these nations experience extreme boom and bust (especially bust) cycles.

Access to information: the Internet
Once presented as a new golden era for free speech, the Internet has not proven to be even half as resilient as expected in the face of a totalitarian regime willing to control its content. However, the Internet is necessary to keep a modern economy going, and the technical means required to impose politically motivated blocking are costly and complex. Here are some ways to keep your citizens away from "harmful" information in the digital era:

1. Censorship

Internet censorship message in Saudi Arabia, 2005

To begin with, are ISPs and your communications infrastructure fully state-owned? If so, blocking, filtering and removing content becomes so much easier. If not, a common legislative weapon is making the businesses behind them responsible for blocking, and making them liable to harsh penalties for any mistakes or if they refuse to comply.

How widespread is the blocking going to be? Considering that you are building a totalitarian state, it is likely that international social media, search engines, blogging platforms and news sources are unavailable. However, this will not stop demand for these services, so your state will need to create national counterparts of all (PRC, Cuba) or at least some (North Korea and its email system) of them. Russia has its own search engine (Yandex), its own mail system (mail.ru), and its own social media (Vkontakte).

Finally, censorship can easily be dodged with a VPN, so you will need a way to deal with them. They are key for businesses and the government, so blocking them all is not an option. Instead, options include blocking only those VPNs that provide access to censored content or simply criminalizing access to banned websites.

The PRC is home to the world's most advanced censorship system. Its infamous Great Firewall requires enormous resources to maintain (the equivalent of billions of dollars per year and >50,000 employees), but it is extremely effective at deleting or blocking content in highly specific grounds while minimizing overblocking. This is possible because, in the PRC, the entire telecommunications' service is state-owned, and the telecommunications' industry is dominated by state-owned enterprises. The state's level of control is shown in full display in its ability to shut down popular applications in specific areas of the country or its ability to disconnect certain individuals from the Internet (and the PRC has 1.4 billion citizens). The country's international Internet gateway is centralized too, allowing authorities to cut cross-border services at will.

The Great Firewall uses both automatic methods and human employees to detect and erase sensitive content from domestic audiences. Furthermore, the Great Firewall also (intentionally) slows down cross-border internet traffic, meaning that foreign websites can take a frustratingly long time to load. This makes them less appealing than local websites, which are far more controlled and devoid of critical content.

Service providers are banned from setting up VPNs without licensing. Companies such as China Telecom route VPN traffic through a special, company-owned server that immediately blocks all unapproved users. A technique called deep packet inspection (DPI), also implemented in other countries, blocks all requests containing certain keywords, irrespective of the site visited. Furthermore, every ISP implements its own method of filtering that might differ from that of other ISPs operating in the country.

The example of the PRC showcases how extremely complex an advanced Internet censorship system can be. It is definitely out of the scope of states that can not afford the expense or have the technical means to do it. Or, simply, a state may be unwilling to waste these many resources in such a system.

2. Manipulation

Mass internet censorship is very costly, requires constant updates, and, ultimately, can not consistently block every single piece of critical content that exists. Hence, most authoritarian regimes (following Russia's lead) have turned into manipulating content, using a number of different techniques that hide away or supress critical content, corrupt unwanted online discussions, and amplify propaganda messages. Broadly speaking, there are two main types of manipulation tactics: legal and extralegal ones.

Legal tactics are law-mandated restrictions that, in effect, distort information so that progovernment viewpoints are systematically overrepresented, while anti-government views are systematically underrepresented. This intent is extremely blatant with the PRC's "Provisions on the Governance of the Online Information Content Ecosystem", which legally forces internet platforms to actively promote party doctrine by all means possible (including via algorithms), and similarly discourage "excessive gossip" or "sensationalism", in addition to mandating the removal and blocking of illegal content.

In the PRC, Vietnam, Cuba and Saudi Arabia, among other countries, popular blogs, websites and even self-publishing users need a license or some other kind of explicit government approval to legally post news content. The former two also explicitly require all users to use their real names, either through registration requirements (PRC) or an outright ban on publishing under a pseudonym (Vietnam). Websites also may be liable for content posted in them; this can prompt websites to block the comments' section, as occurs in Vietnam. Some countries do away with net neutrality entirely, as is the case in the PRC (shown above: cross-border connections are intentionally slowed down) and Iran (where users accessing solely domestic websites receive cheaper Internet). Finally, throttling deserves a mention: in sensitive times, the state may artificially increase traffic and slow down Internet speeds, to the point where even images can not be shared.

Extralegal tactics are not necessarily illegal, but they have no basis on law (which is usually just completely silent on the matter). The most common and best known one is the use of paid online commentators (and bots) that post progovernment messages and attack its critics. Such commentators nowadays have spread even to democratic countries, and are near-universal among authoritarian states. Authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, employ another tactic called hashtag poisoning: an undesirable but popular Twitter hashtag is suddenly flooded with spammy, irrelevant or hate speech messages posted by automated accounts. Outright illegal tactics are becoming more common too, including denial of service attacks, hacking of antigovernment websites, hacking and hijacking of activists' social media accounts, and the use of spyware and other computer viruses.

3. Denial

Screenshot of North Korea's Red Star OS 3.0 GUI

Sovietized totalitarianisms deserve their own mention because they are not only keen on denying their citizens access to the global Internet, but also on developing their own national intranets. Such is the case of North Korea's Kwangmyong and Cuba's Nauta. Both intranets host their own search engines and email services, as well webpages that mimick Google Maps, Wikipedia, and other popular services. They even have their own operating systems, frequently based on Linux (because it is an open source): North Korea has developed the RedStar OS and Cuba has developed Nova.

In states with low living standards, denying the population access to the global Internet is relatively easy and usually done through a mix of state-owned control of the telecommunications industry and artificially high prices that are out of reach for the majority of the population. In these states, Internet speed tends to be intentionally slow too. For example, in Turkmenistan, the monthly cost of a local internet connection is as much as a quarter of the average salary in the country, while connection speeds are only 0.4-2 Mbps (for reference, the US average in 2020 was 26.7 Mbps).

In any case, a totalitarian state that denies their citizens access to the global Internet often implements extremely shaky censorship, because mass censoring something that most of the population does not even have access to is a waste of resources and also what you were trying to avoid in the first place.

Finally, temporary full Internet shutdowns deserve mention. Often enacted in times of unrest, they require a high degree of state control over telecommunications' infrastructure, and are simple, shaky methods of curtailing the flow of undesired information. Keep in mind, though, that economic and social damage from shutdowns is significant, and also tends to spread panic as citizens are unable to communicate with their relatives and friends to check if they are OK.

Consistency
Always think of the consequences of your policies. Always. I can not stress this enough. It applies to any nation you RP, but especially in a totalitarian one. A command economy will not make your country wealthy - it may introduce near-full employment, high levels of equality and generous welfare, but also shortages and stagnant growth. Resorting to anonymous denunciations (a favorite of Stalin's USSR) will result in high numbers of political prisoners and/or executions, prison overcrowding, broken families, widespread terror and negative popular perspective on the regime. A conscription system like Eritrea's will essentially destroy your nation's education system, as children see no other future than indefinite military service and teachers are often untrained conscripts. And so on.

Also, try to pick and adapt the options in this guide according to the cultural and historical context of your state. I did note above how the modern Turkmen model would not work in the PRC, where the population is better educated and politically aware, and there is not a single large resource to embezzle funds in large amounts. Are citizens politically aware? If so, they are much more likely to scrutinize the government's actions as well as participate in protests. Are citizens well educated? If so, propaganda must be handled with extra care to mantain a degree of believability. Does the country have a history of war and foreign aggression? If so, it is more likely to be militaristic and have autocratic tendencies. Does the population live in poverty? And, most importantly, how does that affect your nation?

Conclusion
In conclusion, what a totalitarian state fundamentally needs is to monopolize all power and eliminate all checks and balances while theoretically directing a nation through an ideology that sets an unachievable goal. It seems simple, but actually requires an enormous amount of careful planning, especially when building a repressive apparatus for social control. Furthermore, be wary of unintended consequences of your policies, and also of the effects the nation's history and social context have.

Hope this massive guide helped you building a realistic totalitarian state or, at least, inform you of the common characteristics every totalitarian state shares. If so, please share and upvote so that the NationStates community can have some of this knownledge too.

Changelog

• 10/8/19: Fixed spelling errors and improved punctuation.

• 15/8/19: Fixed punctuation, spelling and awkward wording. Expanded conclusion.

• 4/9/19: Added index and navigation tools.

• 20/9/19: Expanded and improved some sections, removed ideologically charged statements.

• 4/2/20: Expanded and improved some sections, fixed wording and punctuation.

• 13/8/20: Added some detail, minor grammar fixes.

• 10/12/20: Added a comment on Turkmenistan's internet costs and speed, as example of government denial of internet service.

• 3/4/21: Spelling fixes.

• 4/2/22: Started updating some sections. Some information is derived from The Art of Political Control in China (by Daniel Mattingly).

• 6/2/22: Belarus is now listed as a potential totalitarian state. Rewrote market socialism section.

• 7/2/22: Rewrote internet manipulation section.

• 1/3/22: Added detail about the songbun system in North Korea.

• 14/5/22: Added commentary about the PRC's weaponization of corruption, expanded brute force section.

• 1/8/22: Cleaned up some sections.

• 10/11/22: Minor edits in the Ideology section.

• 21/11/22: Added images.

• 1/1/23: Added more images. Updated commentary on Turkmenistan as Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow is no longer President.

• 4/6/23: Minor text edits.